Reader Story
When Julie Ann Godson researched the names on three Oxfordshire war memorials, she discovered a fascinating cross-section of society from captains to ploughboys – who all became heroes, says Claire Vaughan
Researching the names on three local First World War memorials changed Julie Ann Godson’s life
Earlier this year, local historian Julie Ann Godson set herself a challenge – the daunting task of researching every name on her three local war memorials. Along the way she discovered far more than just the backgrounds of fallen men: she uncovered the impact that their loss had on their families, and the heavy toll of grinding rural poverty. And, frustratingly, she turned up one mystery man whose origins remain elusive.
Julie Ann studied history at Oxford University and has continued to research local history. “I give talks and publish books on the subject. I moved here from Kent in 2010, and was interested in the history around me,” she says.
“I often pottered down to my local church, St Denys’ in Northmoor, and with the 100th anniversary of the Armistice approaching, my eyes kept wandering up to the solemn and beautiful memorial on the wall.”
She noticed that there were no ranks and no titles by any of the names. “I now realise that every death was deemed an equal contribution. I thought that researching this arbitrary list of 48 names on the memorials at Northmoor, Standlake and Stanton Harcourt would be a good way of exploring society in the Lower Windrush Valley at the start of the 20th century.”
Julie Ann set out to focus on their lives before the war. “It’s staggering to think that these three small rural communities lost so many men,” she says. “Some families bore multiple losses. Several women lost two sons, one woman lost all three.”
She decided to compile her research into a book to raise funds for the veterans’ mentalhealth charity Combat Stress ( combatstress.org.uk). Our Boys
these ‘It’s staggering to think that men’ small communities lost so many
1914–1918 was launched on 28 September – fittingly at Northmoor Village Hall.
When she began, Julie Ann soon realised what a mammoth task she had taken on. “I floundered a bit at first – each serviceman took me about a week, but once I narrowed down which sources were most useful, I got it down to a couple of days. It took four months of absolutely full-time work to finish the book.”
Her research began with the big hitters in every family historian’s arsenal – the census; birth, marriage and death records; and local parish registers.
“First of all, I investigated each man’s family background,” she says. “I accessed local newspaper reports via my library subscription – these were fantastic. Jackson’s Oxford Journal was very good for finding out snippets about people’s background, including quite delicious things like convictions for poaching.”
<RXQJ 0HQ·V 6DFULÀFH
Julie Ann eventually realised that she’d have to engage with the military records. “In some cases, a soldier died so young that the only thing on record about him was his baptismal entry and then the circumstances of his death. Left school, went to war, was killed, end of story. So that’s what I had to write about.”
However, she found that
the records were incomplete, so she had to hunt around for fragments to form pictures of her men. Not least because many service records from the First
World War were destroyed by a bomb during the
Second World
War. What remains of these ‘burnt documents’ can be accessed on ancestry.co.uk.
Julie Ann also used the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website www.cwgc. org: “This was pretty accurate, and gave me the names of next of kin.” Forces War Records ( forceswar-records.co.uk) also proved useful for cross-referencing, while The Long, Long Trail website provided amazing detail – the what, where and why of the war ( longlongtrail.co.uk). “We also have a new museum in Woodstock, the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, which has a reconstruction of a trench ( sofo.org.uk).”
War diaries on Ancestry were invaluable for piecing together the final moments of many of the men’s lives. “It’s like a jigsaw. If you’ve got the date, you can look at the day-by-day reports by the commanding officers, and pinpoint the precise action in which your man was killed.”
Surprising Discoveries
As well as specific discoveries, she also had several more general revelations. “I’d always thought that they listed the names of all the boys from that community who died,” says Julie Ann. “But as war memorials were funded by public subscription rather than the Government, they actually reflect the presence of family members living in that community in the years just after the war, who wanted to see their loved ones’ sacrifices acknowledged in public. You will find names from far and wide.”
In fact, one of the boys listed, George Kensett, lived in Canada. “Norah Busby, a young girl from Northmoor, went into service in London where she met George, who was in the Expeditionary Force on his way to France. They got married and she came home to Northmoor to wait for him, but he was killed.” Poor Norah – how different her life would have been. George’s name on the memorial represents her sacrifice.
Julie Ann also found out that an agricultural depression meant the villagers endured extreme poverty. “A lot of young men opted for the Army or Navy even before the war broke out, as an alternative to starvation or to relieve the pressure on the family, so that their younger siblings would get fed.”
This had an impact on soldiers at the outbreak of war, but not in the way you might think. Julie Ann found that quite a few of her men had already been in the services before 1914, and had been called up out of the reserves when war broke out. “A lot of very ordinary, humble people seemed to rise from the lowest ranks quite quickly. If they already knew how to drill and how to fire a rifle, they were put in charge of the ones who didn’t. We’re often told that workingclass men were only promoted after all the upper-class officers had been killed, but it wasn’t quite like that.” This was one curious effect of rural poverty.
Some incredible stories emerged from Julie Ann’s research, such as that of George Bolton. “What an impressive character! He joined the Navy in 1898 as a stoker and travelled the globe – Canada, Bermuda, Sri Lanka. For two years before the war, he patrolled the Yangtze River in China on a
gun boat. There was me thinking they were all innocent lads who’d never been out of Oxfordshire!”
George joined the world’s first battlecruiser HMS Indomitable in 1914. He saw action in several famous battles: Gallipoli, the Battle of Jutland, and the Battle of Dogger Bank. “George was invalided out in July 1918 with lung problems, possibly as a result of years of shovelling coal in ships’ engine rooms. He died in 1919, but he did give his life to the Navy, and is listed on the war memorial in Standlake.”
Our Boys 1914–1918 really does provide a cross-section of society. The highest-ranking officer Julie Ann came across was Captain William Esson. William had had an affair with a married woman, and her divorce was played out in the most shocking detail in the newspapers. “His behaviour was no worse than a humble ploughman’s. It’s just that the two families involved had the resources to go to law and sort things out, and the papers preserved the results.”
The tales she unearthed all, ultimately, have a tragic end, but the story of Percy Franklin will stay with her for a long time. “He went missing in action. They found nothing: not a belt buckle, not a cap badge – nothing. No amount of archaeological excavation is ever going to find anything of him and so many other boys.” Percy’s medals were sent to his mother, and she had them buried with her when she died. From her window, Julie Ann can see the churchyard where Alice Franklin lies with all she had left of her son.
A Soldier’s Secrets
Among the 48 she researched, there was one mystery man, Gilbert Burden, whose chapter makes very intriguing reading. Try as she might she could not confirm his parentage. “I believe his family did their very best to obfuscate his origins. I suspect he was illegitimate, and that his records are not entirely accurate.” She found conflicting details for him everywhere she looked. “Other family researchers I’ve consulted can’t get to the bottom of it either. You never know, someone might come forward with the key to unlock it all, but I’ve got a feeling that we were never meant to unlock it.”
Julie Ann’s book bears witness to these men’s lives in a way that most of us never get the chance to. It’s a timely reminder that these memorials are not about guns and tanks and battles – they’re about ploughboys, farmhands, sons and brothers, and the huge gap they left in small communities.
“I’ll never forget them,” says Julie Ann. “I think about them every day.”
Julie Ann Godson’s
Our Boys 1914–1918 (AlleyCat Books) is available from Amazon, priced £10.99
their ‘I believe Gilbert’s family did very best to obfuscate his origins’