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For King And Country

Frank (left) and Tom Roberts in the last photograph they had taken before Tom was killedNearly a million young men from the British Empire were killed during the First World War.  Many are buried in military cemeteries hundreds of miles from home.

Tom Roberts, eldest son of John Wells and Caroline Martha, was 22 when he was killed in the battle of Bellewaerde Ridge during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.  His letters from the front, transcribed by his niece, my mother, provide a valuable record of life in the trenches and have been deposited in the Museum of the Cheshire Regiment in Chester. He is buried in Belgium (locate his grave here). Tom’s brother Frank was seriously wounded in battle but survived.

Their cousin Hubert Thomas, only child of John and Elizabeth, was 21 when he was killed at D’Amien in 1917 (locate his grave here). Their Uncle William Hawkins died in Mesopotamia in 1916 leaving a widow and an eleven year old daughter.  His grave is in what is now Iraq (locate it here).

Hubert Gilmore Dewsberry, only son of Robert and Lizzie, was nineteen when he fell in Gaza a year later (locate his grave here). His cousin Reginald Jack Dewsberry was just 23 when he died at the Sommes (locate his grave here).

Wiliam and Annie Rees lost two sons, both in their twenties. Ivor Guest Rees is buried at Rouen (locate his grave here), his younger brother Vivian is buried in Box Cemetery Llanelli.

•David Roberts Morgan died at the beginning of the Second World War and is buried at the Netley Military Cemetery in Hampshire. (locate his grave here)

•David Dewsberry Evans (1933-1960), only child of Ivor and Muriel, was only 26 when he was shot dead defending one of his own men while serving with the Royal Artillery at Nisab in Aden. The plaque in his memory on the wall of his father's church at Long Bredy in Dorset quotes St John’s Gospel: "Greater Love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"

To borrow an expression from Uncle Tom’s obituary, written by one of his friends - “Their soldierly actions will blossom. even in the dust.”

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