The fallen soldiers, all from the same school
THE trees still standing on Western Road represent much-loved sons and husbands cut down in their prime.
There is the poignant story of the Beck brothers. One died in battle, the other survived the slaughter.
Ernest Beck married his sweetheart, Harriet Haywood, in April 1915 shortly before heading overseas. He served as a sapper in the Royal Engineers and was killed in action in February 1918, aged 27.
He was a veteran of the 3rd Battle of Ypres, the year before. But his younger brother Robert survived the war, married in 1923 and went on to own a grocer’s shop in Sheffield. He lived in the city until his death aged 79.
The memorial remembers a second set of brothers: Sergeant John Box, 22, and Private George Box.
John died of his wounds in France in September 1918, during the final months of the war. His younger brother, George, was killed while fighting in Flanders with the Royal Fusiliers in July 1917.
Private Bernard Gunson, from the Leicestershire Regiment, went missing on May 27, 1918. He was never found and his death remained a mystery to his heartbroken family. George Carr, a private with the Northumberland Fusiliers, died in Flanders in April 1918, while John Dalby, a private with the Yorks and Lancs Regiment, died in Flanders the next month, aged 22.
Researchers have uncovered the names of 28 of the Western Road memorial soldiers and an astonishing 15 were teenagers, with one, Walter Jowie, a 17-year-old boy who should have been too young to fight.
They all once attended the same primary school on Western Road where children are still taught today.