By Alf Wilkinson

Look at the photo on the left. It is a common sight in the UK, and in many other countries. Nearly every village has a war memorial often, like this one in Heckington, on the village green.

I have often looked at the war memorial in the chapel in my village, Little Hale. It's only a tiny village - a hamlet really - there are only about 50 houses there even today - and seen the two names on the memorial, and wondered who they were, where they are buried, what happened to them. Well, by using the web, it is now possible to find out a great deal about them.

If you look carefully at the photo of the war memorial in Little Hale Methodist Chapel (below, right), there are several clues to help us discover more about these two soldiers.

click to enlarge

Their names, and date and place of death are there, but also the top corners of the memorial tell us they were in the Lincolnshire Regiment. The badge at the centre top says 'Egypt'. Why, I wondered?

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains the graves of all soldiers killed since 1914, so the first place to look is their web site, www.cwgc.org.

Scroll down the page and click on the link that takes you to the Debt of Honour Register. Insert the details for F Garrill; the year of his death, (1915); and the Force he served in (Army).

Immediately we find his details from the register, his parents and the place where he lived (NB: Great Hale Fen has become Great Vale Fen in the register - you can't always trust official documents!), and the place he is commemorated - the Helles Memorial in Turkey.

Now try searching the Web using the term "Suvla Bay" (inserting the " " cuts out all the Suvla searches and all the Bay searches). You will be directed to plenty of sites where you will be able to find out about the Gallipolli Campaign. You should be able to find out what happened at Suvla Bay in August 1915 -

• What was Fred Garrill doing there?
• What was the fighting like?
• Was it like the Trenches of the Western Front, or was it different?
• Why was Britain fighting Turkey?
  

And so on. You should soon get a good idea of the battle where Fred Garrill was killed.

Return to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Register and this time put John William Ward into the search. Using the name as written on the memorial finds no matches, but try again, this time using the initials J W. This shows two Wards who were members of the Lincolnshire Regiment killed very close together in 1917, both with the same initials. One, a private, came from Doncaster, whereas the other, a corporal, must be our John William Ward, because he came from Little Hale, the village where I live. I discovered he is commemorated at the Tyne Cot Memorial, in Belgium.

Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium

He was killed at the Third Battle of Ypres, or Passchendale as we also call it. Try searching for Ypres to find out more about the battle. You can also find out more about Tyne Cot by searching for "Tyne Cot Memorial" (remember to use inverted commas to cut out unnecessary finds.) This will tell you, among other things, that Tyne Cot is the largest British military cemetery in the world.

There is one final search I made. I tried to find out more about the Lincolnshire Regiment, the regiment both soldiers served in. I searched for "Lincolnshire Regiment", and was directed to the web site for the Royal Anglian Regiment, the successor to the Lincolnshire Regiment. (You will find this at www.army.mod.uk/army/infantry/anglian/index.htm.) I discovered the regiment was founded in 1685, and the badge on the war memorial, 'Egypt,' refers to a battle honour granted to the Regiment in 1801, one of Wellington's great victories over Napoleon. I also discovered the regiment's nickname is the Poachers, as their regimental march is the Lincolnshire Poacher!

So you see, with a little help from the Web, I have been able to find out a great deal about these two soldiers who left their Lincolnshire village to fight in World War One and never returned. Why don't you try to do the same for the names on your own local memorial. Each village has one, and with a little time spent searching the Internet, you might be amazed at what you can discover.