My grandad’s lost legacy
MY GRANDAD Arthur Smith was part of the British Expeditionary Force in the Great War. Outnumbered ten to one, they kept the enemy from occupying the Channel ports. These men were later known as the Old Contemptibles, and after the war branches were formed around the world. They called themselves Chums and helped out less fortunate comrades. In the Fifties, they raised funds for a permanent memorial — an arch in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in London. On July 14, 1974, due to old age and infirmity, six branches of the Old Contemptibles Association — Acton, Camden Town, Chelsea, Clacton, Edmonton (my grandad was standard bearer) and Hendon — paraded in London for the last time and laid up their standards at the church, to be looked after ‘for ever more’. However, when a coffee bar was opened in the crypt in the mid-Eighties, the arch was moved and the standards deposited in the archives. Due to maintenance a decade ago, the arch was broken up and the church has no record of what happened to it. The Edmonton and Hendon branch standards were gifted to the Cloth Hall Museum in Ypres, Belgium, in October 2008, where they are well cared for. The whereabouts of the other four standards is unknown as the church has kept no details. Does anyone know where they can be?
ROSALIE PENN, Ware, Herts.