When we first published my book Southborough War Memorial through Odd Dog Press we had a modest print run, and when this was sold out, there didn’t seem to be a case for a further re-print, though we did subsequently produce a Kindle version. Fortunately, with the advent of print on demand, we are able to publish a revised version, with some extra material I’ve been sent by relatives since the first edition in 2009. I’m particularly pleased to include a photograph of George Furey, a Newfoundlander whose tremendous act of courage went largely unrecognised, apart from by those who witnessed it or whose lives he saved in December 1942.

A book which lists as much detail as I could find in my research on the two hundred and fifty-five listed on the local war memorial in our small town must, by its nature, be a niche offering, and yet, if you read through it, you would, in an oblique way, be absorbing a universal story - of the effects of war on any community. There were those who died of battle wounds, certainly, but also others who died in accidents while training or on active service, of influenza, or of drowning. Many left families behind to struggle with grief and poverty, some hadn’t had time to outgrow their teens, and there were those who died after the war’s end as a result of their experiences.

I have a page on my website for those not commemorated, and for those wounded. Of course, the wounds of war are not always visible, and we know that there were many who were irrevocably affected by war trauma, tucked away in mental hospitals, out of sight, to end their days.

This book is a small contribution to recording the effects of war; it was a labour of love that brought it to fruition, and I am personally happy it is no longer out of print. I was recently contacted by the grandson of a First World War casualty, whose descendants are planning to gather at his grave on the one hundredth anniversary of his death.  My hope is that public commemorations taking place this year of deaths which occurred a century ago will, for many of us, serve not as jingoistic celebrations of Britain’s long-past empire, but for the opportunity to reflect on those suffering in wars both in 1918, 2018, and every season in between.

I believe there is a Chinese proverb that goes something like ‘May you not have sons in times of war’. Indeed. Though today of course this may extend to daughters.

The father of Harold Dowdell (commemorated on Southborough War Memorial and on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme) wrote in his diary on hearing of his son’s death in 1916:

Echoes and shadows in the home. I am not stunned but overwhelmed. My dear brave loving cheerful, thoughtful boy.

and two years later, when he lost a second son, Ernie, at Arras in April 1918:

With aching heart I reached home in afternoon. My desolate home.

Click here for online ordering.

I shed a few tears yesterday. My husband, who placed my wedding ring on my finger almost 38 years ago as we made our wedding vows at Capel Kings Cross, had to cut it off with a pair of wire-cutters. Happily for me this was followed by a reassuring loving hug.

My mother, at 94 years old, still has delicate thin fingers, but I seem to have inherited my father’s gene in respect of a tendency to swollen joints, and my ring-finger was becoming increasingly troublesome. Although it was swollen, and there would likely never now be any possibility of slipping the ring over the middle joint, I had hoped there would not be a need, but when I woke yesterday morning with a very sore finger I knew the ring had to be removed.  Perhaps the cold weather had made it worse, I don’t know, but after an unsuccessful attempt at a method for getting rings off found on you-tube, Martin fetched his tool-box.

Mum gave me the ring when I was a teenager. She had worn it since 1944, when she and Dad were married, and he had bought her a new ring for their 25th Wedding Anniversary. They bought it at Woolworths, and it had been decorated with orange-flower leaves, she told me, but they had worn down somewhat, and now, after almost 50 years of my wearing it daily, have completely disappeared.
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I believe that our marriage is, of course, only symbolised by the wedding ring, but nonetheless, and I’m sure I share this with many others, there’s something distressing about cutting it off my hand. In due course perhaps I will take it to a jewellers and have it soldered so that I can at least wear it on a chain round my neck.

We all know that when we pass out of this life we can’t take anything material with us, but we all cherish certain items we deem precious and meaningful. We have a number of family heirlooms, not valuable in monetary terms, but which give a kind of continuity, of heritage: my father-in-law’s football  trophy, my son’s first Clarks shoes, my Nanna’s kitchen-tongs (still in almost daily use!).

How painful it must be for the many dispossessed, fleeing from war, terror, desperate want, who can’t take these things with them.  I often think of my late friend Max, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, and who came to Britain on a Kindertransport. He had to make a new life here, and had virtually no mementoes of his loved ones. But at least he was given sanctuary - which sadly is no longer on offer in Britain today to so many who need it.