Family will finally lay WW1 soldier to rest
Relative had been missing in action for 100 years until workers widening road found his remains
AS THE final notes of Last Post fade away at a cemetery near Ypres, three British sisters will lay a wreath this week at the graveside of a relative whose body they thought would never be found. For 100 years, 2nd Lieut Eric Henderson was missing in action after falling on the Western Front in the First World War. He was 21 and serving in the London Regiment Post Office Rifles.
But last year, workmen digging to widen a road near the village of Voormezele, West Flanders, unearthed his remains. Unlike most soldiers’ bodies, they were able to identify him because a single silver coin engraved with his name and regiment lay next to him.
On Wednesday, his great nieces, Sarah Foot, Lucy Cocup and Judith Leyman, will join locals, representatives from his old regiment and the British
Safely home
Embassy in Belgium to lay him to rest. “Thanks goodness they found him,” Mrs Foot, a 59-year-old school administrator from Twickenham, London, said. “I’m terrifically proud of him. I expect the whole thing will be overwhelming. To us he is Great Uncle Eric.”
As children, the sisters were told by their parents how their great uncle had died in June 1917 following one of the bloodiest days of the Great War.
The British Army detonated 450 tons of high explosives in 19 tunnels beneath the enemy at Wytschaete-Messines Ridge, killing more than 10,000 Germans. Lieut Henderson was part of the British advance on the remaining German positions. However, as they approached the strategic White Château they came under fire and he was killed. Mrs Foot added: “We believe he had been temporarily buried by the soldiers with him during that battle that day, possibly with the intention that they would return to give him a proper burial. But, in the quagmire that followed they either couldn’t find him or were unable to return.”
As the sisters grew up they researched their great uncle’s past, discovering that Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement, had written to their great-grandparents to commiserate them. In his letter he offered his “sincere sympathy” for the loss of the former Scout, adding that “the manner of your son’s death must be a source of pride and comfort to you.”
But, like their great-grandparents, the sisters accepted that he was, like so many British soldiers, one of the fallen whose remains would never be found.
When the Ministry of Defence contacted them in December last year, they were astonished. “I broke down in tears. My sister said she had cried too,” said Mrs Foot. “I know that Judith did as well. It seems bizarre to get upset, but it was because it was family. He went from a family legend to being very real and in sharp focus.”