Remember our dead in Silesia

An appeal to help remember our British Army dead. I am happy to pass on the following information which has been sent to me by Jim Powrie. Jim writes: 

"In 1921/1922 the 1st Bn Durham Light Infantry (DLI) sent a detachment to Upper Silesia in a peacekeeping role mandated by the League of nations. The DLI were formed part of a larger British force. During the deployment a total of 41 British soldiers died as a result of violent action, accident, illness or suicide. Of the 41, four were serving with the 1st Battalion DLI.

• Sgt John Thomas Waknell who died of his wounds on 15 July 1921, was shot (accidently) by a French soldier in a scuffle in a café in Oppeln during an arms raid. The official report says a Polish insurgent shot him, but evidence from the National Archives suggests it was a French soldier. The French Commander of the force awarded him, posthumously, the Croix de Guerre. His funeral cortege is pictured above.
• Pte. Lewis Sawyer died in a road traffic accident on 20 August 1921
• 2nd Lt. Harold Wynn died of pneumonia on 26 September 1921. The photo at the top of this post shows the Honour Guard at Lt Wynn's funeral. His interment is shown in the photo below
• Pte. William George Raffan died in Lublintz on 17 Jan 1922 as a result of a 35’ fall from a window.

"All four men were buried with military honours in the British Military section of the municipal cemetery. The two who died before 1st September 1921 were considered to be ‘war dead’, and in 1924 their bodies were exhumed from the plot in Oppeln and re-interred in the Berlin Southwestern War Cemetery at Stahnsdorf where they lie today in impeccably maintained surroundings.

Oppeln Cemetery 1931

"The other two men however didn’t fair so well. Today they remain in the cemetery in what is now Opole in Poland (it became part of Poland after WW2) lying neglected and abandoned in unmarked graves along with the 28 other men who died after 1st Sepember 1921."

The same plot in modern day Opole in 2017.

The 30 men still buried at Opole are:

Pte. Frank PORTER, 6192593, 3rd Bn. Middlesex Regiment died 15th September 1921

Pte. Frederick Arthur MARSH, 6192598, 3rd Bn. Middlesex Regiment died 21st September 1921

Signaller Edward Albert IGGLESDEN, 2308631, Royal Signal Corps died 23rd October 1921

Lieut. Harold WYNN, 1st Bn. Durham Light Infantry died 26th September 1921

L/Cpl. Alfred Edward EMONS, 7178715, 2nd Bn. Leinster Regiment, died 26th November 1921

Farrier/Staff Sgt. Harry SMITH, 536333, 14th Hussars died 2nd December 1921 

Pte. Patrick BARRY, 7178489, 2nd Bn. Leinster Regiment died 12th December 1921

L/Cpl. Alfred Edward EVANS, 4437204, 1st Bn. Durham Light Infantry died 14th December 1921

Pte. Martin Francis FRANKLIN, 7110764, 1st Bn. Royal Irish Regiment died 15th December 1921

Pte./Actg. Cpl. Frank Thomas DAVIES, S/8651, Royal Army Service Corps died 18th December 1921

Bmbr. Henry POWRIE MM., 1026458, 62nd Battery Royal Field Artillery died 21st December 1921

Pte. Nathanial MURDAGH, 6973193, 2nd Bn. Royal Inniskillin Fusiliers died 27th December 1921

Pte. John MURRAY, 2744806, 2nd Bn. The Black Watch died 6th January 1922

Pte. William George RAFFAN, 4435084, 1st Bn. Durham Light Infantry died 17th January 1922

Pte. Michael FORAN, 7111257, 1st Bn. Royal Irish Regiment died 11th February 1922

Pte. James KEATING, 7110968, 1st Bn. Royal Irish Regiment died 11th February 1922

Pte. Martin Joseph MURPHY, 7110952, 1st Bn. Royal Irish Regiment died 11th February 1922

Pte. Patrick SHALLY, 7109064, 1st Bn. Royal Irish Regiment died 11th February 1922

C.Sgt. Maj. Harry Fraser JEBSON, 6188423, 3rd Bn. Middlesex Regiment died 21st February 1922

Pte. James LIGHT, 7178629, 2nd Bn. Leinster Regiment died 19th March 1922

L/Cpl. Andrew KELLY, 6973846, 2ND Bn. Royal Inniskillin Fusiliers died 24th March 1922

Pte. John POWER, 3377056, 2nd Bn. Connaught Rangers died 2nd April 1922

Pte. Alfred Allen SEXTON, 6190250, 3rd Bn. Middlesex Regiment died 7th April 1922

Pte. Digory SALTERN, 5431013, 2nd Bn. Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry died 17 April 1922

Sapper Frederick George CREETH, 1854714, Royal Engineers died 25 April 1922

Actg. Sgt. Joseph William Goulding STORER, 6451065, Royal Fusiliers died 5th May 1922

Farrier/Cpl. Charles THOMAS, 536331, 14th Hussars died 6th May 1922

Pte. Reginald GRANT, 5176415, 1st Bn. Gloucester Regiment died 17th June 1922

Sapper James HUNTLEY, 1849413, Royal Engineers died 4th July 1922

Pte. Arthur William FARRELL, M/19911, Royal Army Service Corps died 6th July 1922.

Jim is campaigning to encourage the MoD to remedy this situation and has set up a petition on change.org to kick this off. Please consider signing the petition here: 

https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-defence-provision-of-headstones-for-30-british-soldiers-lying-in-unmarked-graves-in-poland

All photographs on this page are reproduced with Jim Powrie's permission.

MoD references on medal index cards

I've been meaning to write this blog post for a while. What follows may not be rocket science but because the information scrawled on medal index cards is important, I thought I'd draw attention to two of the particular annotations here.

The medal index card above is 'busy'; lots of information here concerning the regiments that James Murray served with, his medal entitlement, the award of his MM which was gazetted on the 19th November 1917, and the re-issue of these campaign medals in 1934. What I want to draw attention to though is the dates that appear in the remarks section. There are two dates here: 24/1/64 and 14/12/53. These are the dates on which an enquiry about this man's service was received by the MoD at its Hayes office in Middlesex. I don't have any background on the 1953 enquiry but I do have a copy of the response that was returned in 1964. Here it is:

This particular response was returned on the 5th February 1964, quite a quick turnaround considering the enquiry had only been received on the 24th January 1964.

And so the first point to note is that the dates expressed thus, are the dates on which the enquiry was received by the Ministry of Defence (MoD):

The second point to note, ruefully, is that in 1964 this man's records were still extant. The information about his enlistment, transfer and discharge can only have come from an attestation paper (or similar document), whereas the entitlement to medals could conceivably have come from medal rolls. At some point after 1964 therefore, the MoD finished what the Luftwaffe had started in 1940 and destroyed James Murray's records.