Names in Stone

Forgotten warriors of Bradford-on-Avon and District
By Jonathan Falconer
£9.99

 

Published: 9 November 2009

The past is like another country. Who said that?  I forget, but the sentiment is there. It’s the same with war memorials. For many, the thousands of graves across the world that mourn the war dead are just names in stone. Even when things are written down, they can be hard to remember, and time, though a great healer, also has an uncanny knack of smoothing over history’s rough edges. Scores of towns in the UK have memorials to their WWI and WWII dead and every year, during Remembrancetide, poppy wreaths adorn their stone steps.

But it can be easy to let the sheer number of names overwhelm you. Most step back and remember a grandfather, a father, a sister – somebody tangible, somebody who can be found in old photographs, somebody who you have evidence actually existed, other than this careful engraving.

John Falconer goes one step further. And a few more besides. The author’s exhaustive research on Bradford-upon-Avon’s war dead includes photographs, letters, military records and stories from tracked down family members. Even those who cannot find much record of, he has named.

Names in Stone is unique, and painstaking, giving colour to the hundreds and hundreds of Johns, Alberts, Samuels and Jacks that were lost during WWII.

It makes for sombre reading. The condolence letter to Mrs Bray, dated 1 November 1944, that reports her son as missing in action. Gunner Leslie Davis, whose end is still unclear, but who Falconer concludes died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. And Lance Corporal Arthur Dobson, who served with the Royal Engineers in Normandy and who later died of war wounds.  Every name has its story.

Falconer asks: “How do you make that quantum leap from names carved in stone or cast in bronze, to the real-life stories of the living, breathing men they recall?”

Well, you could start by reading this book.