(Photo: Rodge Dowson)
‘Journey to the Front – 1915′
Bradley Banks & Chris Coates (Norton College, July 2010)
What have we learnt ?
We have learnt quite a lot. To begin, we learnt that British and Commonwealth servicemen and women from the world wars all have the same shaped design headstones. We learnt that soldiers that died after 1921 and before 1939 didn’t have the commonwealth war grave headstone. We learnt that most churches have a roll of honour, which showed all of the names of people from the town or village who went off to war. We learnt how to use Ancestry online, the Soldiers Died in the Great War CD, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission online register to build background information on individual soldiers and to form a profile of them. We learnt about the battle of the Somme, and how the commanders took the wrong decisions in the battle. On that one day 1/7/1916 – 20,000 British soldiers were either killed or missing and a further 40,000 were wounded. 500,000 German soldiers died during the whole Somme Campaign.
What did we do?
We used programs on the computer to research soldiers of the Great War. We went out and looked at graves, churches and took pictures of headstones, the rolls of honour and memorials. Local newspapers of the period were also searched these included the Yorkshire Gazette.
Bradley & Chris pictured at Scagglethorpe Methodist Church
What do we understand now?
We now understand that all the commonwealth war graves are all the same shaped headstones, and made from the same stone.
Each headstone has a regimental cap badge carved in it, if the soldier has been identified.
The CWGC are responsible for maintaining all the British and Commonwealth war graves, cemeteries and memorials to the missing all over the world where British and commonwealth soldiers are buried and commemorated.
There are fallen soldiers of the Great War from our community, less than a mile from our school, buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard.
These include the following:
Harold Calver
(Photo: Bradley Banks)
Harold Calver (Number 1856) was born in Hutton Cranswick. Son of Mr. G. W. and Mrs. S. J. Calver, of 9, George St., Driffield, Yorks. He was enlisted in Malton (Yorkshire), and had Residence in Norton (Yorkshire). He was in the 5th battalion and was a Private.
He was from the Yorkshire Regiment and died of wounds age 19, on the 7th of November 1916.
Charles Marshall Johnson
(Photo: Chris Coates)
Charles Marshall Johnson (Number CHT/103) was born in Norton, North Yorkshire in 1896. The son of George and Hannah M. Johnson, of 99, Pateley Terrace, Mill St, Norton. He enlisted in Settrington (Yorkshire), and had residence there also. He was a Driver in the Army Service Corps and a member of a local unit the ‘Wold’s Waggoners’.
He died 26th of march 1916.
