War memorial projects Researching war memorials from an article published in Praxis News of Worship Issue 41 War memorials are an enduring visible legacy of the First World War. Many are in our churches, and both congregations and visitors may wish to know something of the human stories that lie behind the stark lists of names. Researching a war memorial has been made much easier by the advent of the internet. Investigations can now be done quickly online. The most useful website is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site (www.cwgc.org) offering a free searchable database of personnel buried in a grave maintained by the CWGC or named on its Memorial to the Missing. Entries provide a name, rank, service number, date of death, age, regiment and the grave’s location or the Memorial to the Missing on which he is named. Several websites provide insights into the British Forces’ role in the First World War: www.1914-1918.net www.westernfrontassociation.com. www.naval-history.net. For those who enjoy statistics and patterns, once individual names have been researched, it should be possible to see the impact on a community: in which years men died (generally 1914 will be the lowest, and the total for 1918 will be the highest); their ages (the dead of 1918 will be significantly younger than those of 1914); the impact on a parish of the big battles (the Somme, 1916; third Ypres, 1917; the German spring offensive, 1918) those killed beyond Europe (Gallipoli, Palestine, Iraq and East Africa). Charles Mathiesen has a longstanding interest in military history. He is researching the WWI memorial in St Anne's, Wandsworth. Keeping the names alive People in a parish in St Albans’ diocese have discovered that the names of the road in a local are taken from those on the war memorial. The church and the school are doing a project about those names and about the families that live in the roads named after them. Using local documentation, it is sometimes it is possible to identify houses from which men named on a war memorial went off to fight. Occupants of those houses may be interested to explore the history of occupants who preceded them and their stories. It may even be possible to link up some of this information with baptism, marriage and burial registers. Ruth Pyke is the Children’s Work Adviser for the Diocese of St Albans
War memorial projects Researching war memorials from an article published in Praxis News of Worship Issue 41 War memorials are an enduring visible legacy of the First World War. Many are in our churches, and both congregations and visitors may wish to know something of the human stories that lie behind the stark lists of names. Researching a war memorial has been made much easier by the advent of the internet. Investigations can now be done quickly online. The most useful website is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission site (www.cwgc.org) offering a free searchable database of personnel buried in a grave maintained by the CWGC or named on its Memorial to the Missing. Entries provide a name, rank, service number, date of death, age, regiment and the grave’s location or the Memorial to the Missing on which he is named. Several websites provide insights into the British Forces’ role in the First World War: www.1914-1918.net www.westernfrontassociation.com. www.naval-history.net. For those who enjoy statistics and patterns, once individual names have been researched, it should be possible to see the impact on a community: in which years men died (generally 1914 will be the lowest, and the total for 1918 will be the highest); their ages (the dead of 1918 will be significantly younger than those of 1914); the impact on a parish of the big battles (the Somme, 1916; third Ypres, 1917; the German spring offensive, 1918) those killed beyond Europe (Gallipoli, Palestine, Iraq and East Africa). Charles Mathiesen has a longstanding interest in military history. He is researching the WWI memorial in St Anne's, Wandsworth. Keeping the names alive People in a parish in St Albans’ diocese have discovered that the names of the road in a local are taken from those on the war memorial. The church and the school are doing a project about those names and about the families that live in the roads named after them. Using local documentation, it is sometimes it is possible to identify houses from which men named on a war memorial went off to fight. Occupants of those houses may be interested to explore the history of occupants who preceded them and their stories. It may even be possible to link up some of this information with baptism, marriage and burial registers. Ruth Pyke is the Children’s Work Adviser for the Diocese of St Albans