Exploring the role of New Forest memorials in post-war healing
The Remembrance Day ceremonies at our war memorials around the New Forest were extremely well attended by young and old alike. The First World War was a catastrophe and the impact it had on most communities in our country led to the creation of memorials in villages, towns, and cities from 1919 onwards. At the same time as our local memorials were being erected, there was a public outcry for a national memorial.
1919 and the beginning of Remembrance
In July 1919 Prime Minister David Lloyd George was planning a victory parade to take place in London to celebrate the end of the Great War, following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on the 28th of June.
1919 was a difficult year for Britain and the empire. Many nations were wanting to be more independent of Britain, with some taking militant action against British rule. At home, the country was in economic recession, many ex-servicemen could not find employment and strikes and protests were commonplace. Lloyd George wanted the parade to be one of celebration, to lift the morale of the people, while at the same time acknowledging the loss of over one-million British and Commonwealth servicemen and women.
The Cenotaph.
The Peace Day celebrations were set for 19th July 1919. This would include a march through London by British and Commonwealth troops, alongside those of the victorious nations. Initial plans were for a catafalque, a temporary structure representing a tomb, to be placed on the route of the march and for troops to salute it as they went passed. This was rejected by the Peace Day celebrations committee, though, as being “too foreign” and not to British taste.
Lloyd George invited the leading architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens to Downing Street and asked him to come up with a temporary structure that could be a centrepiece on the march through central London. Within hours he had sketched the first design for what he called a ‘cenotaph’, which in ancient Greece was an empty tomb.
It represented those soldiers who had died in the war whose bodies had not been returned home. His design was influenced by the classical world with wreaths and a sarcophagus on the top of the monument, but it was not triumphalist. The words ‘The Glorious Dead’ etched on the side reminded the visitor of the fallen rather than great victories. It was non-denominational, which meant the memorial was also relevant to the Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists who had fought and died in the war.
A temporary cenotaph was made from painted wood and plaster and placed in Whitehall in time for the parade on 19th of July. Fifteen-thousand troops marched past the cenotaph, and in their wake were a vast number of civilians all wanting to lay wreaths at the base of the memorial. The Cenotaph had become more than just a centrepiece in a military march-past. It was now a place of pilgrimage. By the end of July over half-a-million people had visited the Cenotaph and laid a wreath.
The newspapers and some MPs were asking for the memorial to be made permanent. The cabinet met at Downing Street and it was agreed that the temporary Cenotaph would be replaced by a permanent one, in stone, to the same design.
The Unknown Warrior
A former army chaplain, David Railton, had an idea inspired by what he had seen during his service on the Western Front. He realised that there was a need for the families and friends of soldiers who had died, but had no known grave, to have some form of closure. Those relatives suffered from “ambiguous loss”.
Railton knew from the painful letters he had received from anguished relatives that they needed some solace. He proposed to the Dean of Westminster Abbey the idea of burying an ‘unknown comrade’ selected from a battlefield of France or Belgium and interred in the Abbey to represent all the men with no known grave.
The idea was approved in October 1920. The only change was that the ‘unknown comrade’ became the ‘unknown warrior’. Comrade was considered to be a term used by Bolsheviks, not the British. ‘Warrior’ was chosen rather than ‘soldier’ as it was possible that the body could be an airman or one of the Royal Navy Division who had fought so gallantly in France and Flanders.
With very little time before 11th November 1920 commemorations, four bodies of unidentified British soldiers were exhumed from the battlefields of the Somme, Ypres, the Aisne and Arras. They were taken to a chapel in the British Headquarters in France and examined by a padre to ensure that they were British but otherwise unidentifiable. The bodies still had scraps of British uniform on them. They were placed on stretchers and covered with the Union Jack.
At midnight Brigadier General Wyatt went into the chapel and selected a body. This was placed in a simple pine coffin and the lid screwed down. The body was then taken to the citadel in Boulogne where it was placed in a coffin made from Hampton Court Oak. A crusaders sword from the Tower of London was fixed to the lid of the coffin.
The body was taken on the 10th November to Dover. Here it was placed on a train and brought to platform eight at Victoria Station, where it remained under guard overnight. The following morning eight Coldstream Guardsmen placed a Union Jack flag and a tin helmet on the coffin. Reverend Railton had used that flag when carrying out burials and other services on the battlefields.
The coffin was placed on a gun carriage and accompanied by the most senior military officers of the four services, and taken to the Cenotaph. On the last stroke of eleven the King unveiled the new, permanent Cenotaph and, after two minutes silence, followed the coffin to Westminster Abbey.
With great ceremony the coffin was lowered into the grave and the King placed some earth from the battlefield over the coffin. Six barrels of earth were brought over from France and Flanders to go in the grave. Rudyard Kipling had written a poem ‘Recessional’, which was sung at the end of the service. One verse is most apt.
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The unknown warrior brought comfort to the families of the missing. One lady was quoted in the Daily Mail of 12th November 1920 as saying, “my boy has come home and has been buried with honours in our Abbey”. Many others believed that it could possibly be their relative who was buried that day.
In 1923 when Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was married to the Duke of York, later King George VI, at Westminster Abbey, she laid her wedding bouquet on the tomb of the unknown warrior. Her brother Fergus is listed on the memorial to the missing of the Loos battlefield. Royal brides have continued this tradition.
Local Memorials
With the national memorial events of 1919 and 1920 being reported in the newspapers, it was not surprising that in the towns and villages of the New Forest there was a similar surge of public feeling for the creation of war memorials to remember family members and friends who had died in the war.
It should be noted that during the war some parishes in the local area collated the names of the men who had joined the armed forces and those who had lost their lives.
By 1917 Milford had a memorial listing the names of serving parishioners and the fallen. Public subscription had raised £31 to pay for this. It was later moved to the cottage hospital when it became the War Memorial Hospital in 1919. One of the names on the memorial is to Private Albert Rickman who was shot at dawn in 1916 for desertion. In a time when some towns excluded from memorials those men who were considered to have suffered ignominious deaths, the people of Milford were compassionate and included Albert. In addition, the names of the fallen from both world wars are carved on oak panels in All Saints Church.
Hordle.
By September 1919 Hordle parish was fundraising for a memorial, and a plot of land on Everton Road had been donated to the parish. They raised enough money to create what was described as a wayside cross, with three wide stone panels radiating from the base on which the names of the fallen along with their place of death was etched. The cross was unveiled on Easter Sunday 1920, with a large crowd of local residents and members of the armed forces in attendance. A bronze plaque listing the names of the Second World War casualties was later added.
New Milton.
The Reverend John Edward Kelsall picked up on the need to commemorate the names of the Miltonians who had been lost in the war. He started a public collection to buy a plot of land and erect a war memorial in honour of the Milton fallen. Around £850 was raised by public subscription. Haywards farm in the town centre had been purchased by Mr Matterson, a wealthy local pharmacist living in Fernhill Lane. Mr Matterson was extremely supportive of the idea of creating a war memorial and a public recreation area for the people of Milton Parish and he agreed to sell the land to the project committee of which he was the chairman!
On 26th September 1920 the war memorial was unveiled to a large crowd including veterans, boy scouts, girl guides, school children and locals. Reverend Kelsall announced that the ground had been given to the town, debt free, “to be used henceforth for the good of the whole parish”. He went on to say that he did not apologise for naming the field a ‘Recreation Ground’ since he wanted to see people “re-created” by sport. He believed that when people were “out of health, despondent or ill-humoured” they could be “restored to health, cheerfulness and good temper” by using the facilities.
Lymington.
In February 1919 the mayor of Lymington set up a fund to create a memorial to the fallen of Lymington. A subcommittee was created to list the names of men who should be included on a proposed war memorial. Fundraising commenced.
Public subscription only just managed to raise enough for the war memorial but records in the St Barbe Museum show that the process was not straight forward, with much debate over fundraising and the type of stone to be used and how the names should be displayed. It was agreed that the memorial would be in the form of a Celtic cross in granite.
By January 1920 the debate raged on between the committee and a potential contractor. In October that same year the committee heard that Cornish granite was in short supply because of its use in memorials around the country.
In February 1921 the memorial had arrived by train from Cornwall, but when inspected was found not to be in accordance with the original drawings. Finally, the memorial was erected and unveiled to the public on 27th March 1921.
Closure
The local war memorials, erected in the immediate aftermath of the great war, listed the names of all who died including the missing. Remembrance could be carried out locally in each town and village but some relatives needed more and this closure could be found at the grave of the unknown warrior. Both local and national sites of memorial played an important part in post-war healing.
Nick Saunders MA is a local historian and chairman of the Milton Heritage Society. He can be contacted via nick@miltonheritagesociety.co.uk
