Mursley Group visit village’s First World War victims
A group from Mursley, near Winslow, has travelled to the battlefields around the city of Ypres in Belgium to remember soldiers from the village who died there during the First World War.
The three-day pilgrimage was planned by Buckinghamshire-based military historian and author, Lt Col (Retd) Derek Plews, who helped the group to understand how the fighting around Ypres developed throughout the course of the war, and the various actions in which the Mursley men and others from the county had been killed. The village casualties, whose details were researched by Mursley’s own local historian, Melinda Cole, included Pte George Thomas Leonard, who was serving with 13th Battalion, Canadian Infantry, buried at Railway Dugouts Cemetery; Sgt George Hollis, A Bty, 153rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, New Irish Farm Cemetery; Spr Thomas Dickens, Royal Engineers, Potijze Chateau Grounds Cemetery; and L/Cpl Roland C Jackman, 1/4th Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing.
Included in the tour were the graves of Buckinghamshire Victoria Cross winner, Second Lieutenant Frederick Youens (24), from High Wycombe, who died while attempting to repel trench raiders near the notorious Hill 60, on 7 July, 1917, at Railway Dugouts Cemetery, and the 1/1st Buckinghamshire Battalion’s first fatality, Pte William Holland (23), from Newport Pagnell, who died of wounds on 8 April, 1915, and is buried in Strand Military Cemetery, on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood.
The group attended the daily Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate during which they laid a wreath, commemorating Mursley’s war dead. Retired Army officer and Mursley resident, Lt Col Lyndon Robinson DL, had the honour of reciting the oration.