Modest monuments pay tribute to ordinary heroes

GLIMPSED from a bus window, a small sign saying that St Thomas’s church in next-door Sutton in Craven is a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery.

You can’t get much further from the battlefield than this Pennine mill village, so who found their last resting place here?

I had to find out. The weather was about right. A bitter wind blew from the east. Dead leaves carpeted the soaking grass.

It was a mournful morning to search for forgotten war heroes, remembered here.

Official war graves are easy to spot. They’re of uniform height and design, no matter the rank they commemorate.

Modest, almost discreet, they sit unobtrusively among the Steads, the Longbottoms, the Thompsons, the Inghams and the Hargreaves, all local names. Officer Cadet HC Jack, of the Corps of Royal Canadian Engineers, died 25 September 1944, aged 30.

“Not in his native land/But far from those/who loved him/In a hero’s grave he lies” reads the inscription.

A few feet away is Sapper J Whitham, Royal Engineers, RIP, died 30 March 1946, presumably of war wounds. And Corporal CW Happs of the RAF, 18 June 1944.

No inscription, just name, rank and number, as if he had been taken prisoner – which, in a sense, he was, by the conflict that devoured so many lives.

What brought these souls to this quiet corner of Yorkshire? Who were they?

The War Graves Commission website reveals that John Whitham was a local man, married to Annie. Horton Cameron Jack also came from the village, married to Joan. There are no details for Clarence William Happs. No fuss, no grandiose monuments. But we remember them.

The diary is resting until December 12.