Memorial to David Lamb, George Hull and George Waterworth

Thanks to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission my brother and myself have been able to locate the resting places of three family members who died in the First World War.

Our grandfather, David Lamb and our great uncle, George Hull were both killed on the Somme, while George Waterworth, grandfather of my brother's wife, died at Ypres in Flanders.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission holds a database of all service men and women who died in the two world wars. The dedications below were taken from the CWGC database.

The moving description of the Battle of the Somme was written by James Power. His web site is well worth a visit - you can find links to that and to the CWGC site at the bottom of the page.

The Somme

At 7.30 am on Saturday, 1st July 1916 the "flower of Britain's youth" rose from the trenches along an eighteen mile stretch of the Western Front in the final push of the "war to end all wars". They had flocked to the recruiting offices in their thousands, most of them eager, before the war was over, to give "the Hun one on the nose". But for so many it would be their lives that would be over, and well before the end of that terrible war in 1918.

By the close of that fateful summer's day in 1916, nearly 60,000 British soldiers, each a son, a father, or a loved one, lay dead and wounded near a small, unassuming river whose name would live in infamy - the River Somme.

By the end of the battle in November more than one million soldiers would become casualties on the fields of Picardy.

In Flanders Field

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.



We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

(by John Macrae 1872-1918)

Links

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

James Power (Somme Tours)