Netley Military Cemetery Part One: An Introduction & the Second World War Plot

Down this road the soldiers went. 

The brilliant, now and forever, documentary series ‘The World at War’ begins with similar words, in Sir Laurence Olivier’s dulcet tones, and I suppose they could be applied to this woodland track,…

…except on this occasion it would be their final journey.

Light at the end of the tunnel,…

…and once in the light, the view ahead.  Netley Military Cemetery, near Southampton in Hampshire, covers seventeen acres and contains over 700 British & Empire Great War graves, along with 36 from the Second World War, among the 3,600 burials made here between the cemetery’s opening, in 1863, and its closing in 1978.  During that time, not only patients, but hospital staff* and their families, were buried here, the vast majority of which, before you anticipate a trek through rows and rows of headstones in order to find those that specifically interest us (as has been the case in the past – check out the Irish posts), are unmarked.

*during the Great War, at least, wounded servicemen who died in other Southampton hospitals – there were a good few – were also buried here, as later posts will show.

The plots (the use of the term ‘plot’ during these posts is my terminology; whether these are officially plots, or sections, or whatever, I really don’t know) are, apart from an Officers’ plot we shall encounter later, denominational, the graves on the hill here all Roman Catholic burials,…

…most of which are Great War casualties.  We shall take a closer look in a later post, but right now, if we stroll part-way up the slope,…

…you get an idea of what lies ahead.  Trees.  Ah, yes, but what lies beyond the trees?  To find out, we need to head for the fence that runs the length of the cemetery, seen here on the far right (eventually returning, by the way, via the tarmacked road on the left),…

…this shot showing where we are going, as we head for the far end of the cemetery.  The small cross visible in the very centre of the picture just to the right of the left-hand tree …

…is seen again here in the right foreground as we make our way up towards the headstones at the top,…

…passing these mainly Belgian graves on our left – again, we’ll look closer in a later post – as we go.

View looking back down the slope,…

…before we take a brief look at this group of headstones at the top of the hill.

Mainly 19th Century graves, they include a military surgeon, on the right, who died in 1865, a chaplain to the forces (the small headstone in the centre) who died in the 1880s, and behind him, a man who ‘died at Netley on the 6th August 1874 from illness contracted during the last Ashanti campaign’ (last, it may have been, at the time, but as it turned out, only the third of five Ashanti wars).

The pathway follows the fence seen in the last two pictures along the cemetery’s eastern boundary,…

…past old, isolated, headstones,…

…until we reach this area, with the Church of England section of the cemetery seen for the first time through the trees centre left, and more CWGC headstones on our right, some of which we appear to have already walked past.  So, if I direct you to the tree by the fence on the very far right of this shot,…

…and I tell you that this is the same tree, and assuming you believe me, and why wouldn’t you,…

…we’ll take a quick look at the headstones along here – a mix of Second World War and post-war burials (the headstones with the clipped edges) – before we go any further.

The headstone on the left is that of Private A. Lilley, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, who died on 22nd May 1951 aged 48; the one on the right is easy to read for yourselves.  493 women & children are buried in the cemetery, many of the women wives of soldiers working at the hospital.

More post-war burials (above & below): On the left, Staff Serjeant G. E. Reed, Royal Army Pay Corps, who died on 26th April 1952 aged 30, and on the right, Company Quartermaster Serjeant D. Keenan, The King’s Regiment, who died on 10th February 1953, aged 36,…

…and on the left here, Corporal E. J. H. Lawrence, The Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment, who died on 22nd August 1961 aged 49, with, on the right, Sergeant D. Frank, Royal Army Medical Corps, who died on 23rd March 1962, aged 30.

Closest to the camera, the grave of Lieutenant George Edward Crofton Maynard, Royal Corps of Signals, who died as the result of an accident on 26th January 1943, aged 23,…

…and in the foreground here, the grave of Major Herbert Lonsdale Chatfield M.B.E. M.C., born in June 1890, who joined the Border Regiment in 1912, won a Military Cross in the Great War (I would presume, although it could have been during the 1920s on the North-West Frontier, or even elsewhere), and served in the 13th Bn. Hampshire Home Guard during World War II, for which he was awarded an M.B.E. in 1944.  He died, aged 65, on 24th September 1955.

Behind, two more Second World War burials,…

…the third & fourth names on this GRRF.  Interesting that officers were still being buried in their own plot during World War II.

Which brings us back to the headstones and tree where we started, and just before we go further,…

…and if we pan out a little, I should mention that there are a few graves under the shadow of the trees on the far left that we shall be visiting near the end of this post.  Meanwhile, we continue along the fence on the right,…

…these three graves those of, from left, Private D. Taylor, Royal Army Service Corps, who died on 19th February 1944, Serjeant H. T. Ley-Ferris, Royal Artillery, who died on 11th April 1944 aged 23, and Private N. M. Davies, Voluntary Aid Detachment, who died on 23rd August 1945, aged 38.

You can read the inscription for yourselves, but surely this headstone should have clipped edges like some of the other non-World War military burials we’ve already seen?

Gunner Frank Albert Aylmer, 2nd (Hants) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, on the left, who was killed during a German air raid on 11th March 1941 aged 31, and Gunner Robert Rideout, Royal Artillery (right), who died on 14th April 1942, aged 20.

Sergeant J. F. Eastwood, Royal Army Medical Corps, who died on 24th February 1973 aged 34.

The three graves in shadow are also all men of the Royal Army Medical Corps, the man buried at the back a private who died in 1937, the two in the foreground both men who died during the Second World War.  On the right, Serjeant William Baker, who died on 7th October 1940, his death due to carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty gas boiler in his house, and on the left,…

…a rather curious headstone that has all the right information – Regimental Sergeant Major George Morris Davey, who died on 8th August 1940 aged 35 – but has no emblem, and doesn’t convince me in any way that it is a real CWGC headstone.  And if it isn’t, why not?

In front, Sergeant H. J. Robinson, also R.A.M.C., who died on 7th May 1971 aged 43.

To the left of the R.A.M.C. burials, the final graves in this small Second World War & post-war plot are two Hampshire Regiment casualties, on the left Private Arthur H. Russell, who died on 7th July 1940, apparently aged 61, and on the right, Private Ronald Thomas Wallis, who died on 31st July 1940, aged 25.

With the two Hampshire men the closest CWGC headstones to the camera on the left, this view looks back at the whole plot.  The large pink flowers on the left…

…can be seen here in the left middle distance, as we look back the way we have come, and ignoring the row of headstones appearing from the front left (and crossing the picture below), at least until next post,…

…we here look across at what is yet to come.  Not that we’ve finished with this post yet, because we need to visit the handful of graves beneath the trees I mentioned a little earlier,…

…where five individual CWGC graves, three to the left of the small cross in the centre of the picture, and two beyond and to its immediate right, all come within the remit of this post.  The two headstones on the left…

…are both Second World War graves, Driver James Richardson, 528 Ammunition Column, Royal Army Service Corps, on the left, who died on 18th June 1940 aged 49, and Gunner Trevor Maynard Watt McVitty, 2o Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, who died a month earlier, on 18th May 1940, aged 33.  Believe it or not, Gunner McVitty fell to his death whilst sleepwalking, falling out of a window and fracturing his skull.

The grave now on the left is an inter-war burial,…

…Lance Bombardier William Charles Owens, Royal Regiment of Artillery, dying in 1934,…

…and the final two headstones, beyond the small cross a couple of shots back, and here seen from the rear,…

…mark the graves of, on the left, Serjeant Eugene Nirke, Intelligence Corps, the only Jewish burial in the cemetery, who died on 22nd February 1950, hence, if you look closely, the clipped edges to the top of his headstone, stacked high with stones left by visitors, and on the right, Private Dennis Raymond Brown, Army Catering Corps, who died on 8th October 1947, aged only 19.  As the cut-off point for a regular CWGC headstone is 31st December 1947, he qualifies for exactly that, but from his age he cannot have enlisted until well after the fighting had ceased.  Eugene Nirke’s story is a most unusual one; wherever he was born (his father lived in Shanghai), he was 27 when he joined the Gloucestershire Regiment in Burma in November 1941, fighting through the Japanese invasion (he may have been wounded, or been taken ill, but his health apparently would suffer from this point on), spent two years in India, joined the Intelligence Corps India Pool, served in Ceylon, Malaya & India again, before being posted as unfit for service.  He became a naturalised British citizen in 1947, and would die of tubercular meningitis & pulmonary tuberculosis in the Douglas House Sanatorium in Southbourne, Hampshire, on 22nd February 1950 aged 35.  And that’s just the bare bones.  The base of the Cross of Sacrifice can be seen in the background, so while we’re here,…

…and as this cemetery, despite its size, has just a single Cross,…

…we’ll take a quick spin around it before we finish.

With the main Church of England section of the cemetery, the subject of our next post, behind, on this side we have an inscription on the Cross,…

…and this small plinth,…

…on which the relevant numbers are listed, and thus I don’t have to do so.