Wallington: Bandon Hill Cemetery – The Great War Graves

Bandon Hill Cemetery welcomes visitors with a Cross of Sacrifice.

‘This Cross of Sacrifice is one in design and intention with those which have been set up in France and Belgium and other places throughout the world where our dead of the Great War are laid to rest’.

I don’t remember ever seeing such an inscription before.

Beyond,…

…we have what appears to be a fair-sized cemetery to explore.

More than fair-sized, perhaps.  The area where all the men and women we are about to visit are buried or remembered is highlighted here, with the Cross of Sacrifice marked as a red dot.

Cemetery plan, the same area marked.

Introduction from the original Register of Graves.  Wallington, for those who care, is today in the London Borough of Sutton, a couple of miles west of the centre of Croydon, my old stamping ground.

If we head over to the far right of this shot,…

…a group of CWGC headstones…

…mark the start of our exploration.

It so happens that these six graves (above & below) are all Second World War burials,…

…among seventy identified World War II casualties buried in the cemetery,…

…a few of whom we shall see as we wander.

The first Great War burial that we encounter,…

…this is the grave of Gunner William Richard Peerless, 45th Anti-Aircraft Company, Royal Garrison Artillery, who died on 8th July 1918,…

…and beyond,…

…the grave of Driver Jeremiah Barry, Army Service Corps (the ‘Royal’ is not really correct, being awarded to the A.S.C. post-war), who died on 4th July 1917, aged 23.

A group of six Great War headstones,…

…the four in the front row shown individually below:

Second-Lieutenant Walter Crooke, 40th Training Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, who died on 12th November 1917 aged 18,…

…and Lieutenant Robin Cresswell Carver, Royal Air Force, who was killed on 17th July 1918.

Carver, a former lieutenant in the Army Service Corps, had been a qualified observer in the Royal Flying Corps, originally in the Middle East, since March 1916.  On 17th July 1918 he and his pilot, Acting Sergeant Charles Mullen, were involved in a mid-air collision over north west London, their Avro 504 spinning into the ground, killing both men.  The subsequent Court of Inquiry concluded, ‘The cause of the accident was due to a collision in the air, owing to bad visibility or a ‘blind’ spot in the machine, thus losing control of the machine, he was unable to rectify the spin before hitting the ground.’  Carver was 41, Mullen 29.

Serjeant W. B. Jardine, Royal Engineers, attached R.A.F., who died on 26th November 1918,…

…and the final grave of the front four, that of Flying Officer Victor Oliver Reynolds, Royal Air Force, another man killed in an accident.  On 12th July 1920, Reynolds & Aircraftman Second Class Percy Braithwaite took off from Kenley aerodrome, five miles south east of here (and very famous for its later role in the Battle of Britain) in a De Havilland 9A, a light-bomber introduced just prior to the war’s end.  A report on the accident in Aeroplane magazine ten days later said, ‘Apparently, Flying Officer Reynolds was turning at about 100 feet and the machine got into some kind of flat spin. There was not sufficient room for the pilot to get it under control again. On hitting the ground it caught fire and those present dragged the two men away from the flames, but they had unfortunately already been killed in the fall.’  A local newspaper report suggested that the aircraft went into a flat spin and fell between two sheds ‘encountering in its plunge a live electric cable which set fire to the machine.’

Reynolds (far right) had enlisted with the Hampshire Regiment in 1907, and embarked for France on 23rd August 1914.  He was seriously wounded in the head on 12th April 1915, spending three months in Netley Hospital in Hampshire before rejoining his regiment towards the end of the year.  He gained a commission in August 1916, was seconded to the Machine Gun Corps in October the same year, and on 22nd February 1918 transferred to the Royal Flying Corps.

If you look carefully at the very bottom of his headstone, you will spot the following line inscribed (not, I think, by a CWGC mason); ‘One of the Old Contemptibles’.

The two Great War graves in the row behind,…

…are those of Second Lieutenant Percy Llewellyn Brown, Royal Air Force, who died of injuries, although I know not how sustained, on 16th October 1918,…

…and Second Lieutenant Charles Henry Albert Godfrey, Royal Air Force, killed when his Sopwith Camel stalled and spun into the ground during tactical flying training at Turnberry, Ayr, in Scotland on 11th December 1918.  A local boy, hence his burial here, and only 23 when he died, he had arrived in France on 5th July 1916 as a private in the 1/16th Bn. Queen’s Westminster Rifles, who had just suffered some 600 casualties out of 750 men who attacked Gommecourt on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.  Presumably fighting his way through the rest of the battle (and much more) with the Queen’s Westminsters, he would return to Blighty in the summer of 1917 and transfer to the Royal Flying Corps in early 1918 – his commission, incidentally, was posthumous.

Air Mechanic First Class Rowland Kemmis Wicks, R.A.F., who died on 12th April 1920 aged 20.

Second World War grave on the left, Great War grave on the right (and below),…

…that of Corporal A. E. R. Norrington, Royal Fusiliers, who died on 14th June 1918, aged 35.  ‘First to the Call’ suggests another early volunteer.

Although we know some of the reasons for the deaths of the men who lie here, do not forget that the later Great War burials, those from 1918 and after, could well be flu-related.

Air Mechanic Third Class Leonard Walter Laming, R.A.F., who died on 15th October 1918, aged 30.

Private headstone of Second Lieutenant Frank Doswell M.M., The Queen’s, who died on 29th December 1919 aged 27, in the foreground,…

…with the CWGC equivalent behind.

On his private headstone, the holes for lettering are there, but the letters were clearly never added; indeed Frank Doswell’s name has simply been painted where the relevant letters were supposed to be placed.  Cost, maybe?  Who knows.

Corporal W. Stevens, Military Police Corps, who died on 27th June 1920, aged 43.

Private Herbert Pilch, Royal Marine Light Infantry, who died of phthisis (tuberculosis, or similar) on 28th August 1920 aged 42.

One of two women buried in this cemetery beneath CWGC headstones, Wren Rose Barbara Harris, “HMS Eaglet”, died of cerebral haemorrhage from a congenital aneurysm at the Royal Naval Hospital, Seaforth, on 9th December 1943 aged 39.  My Mum was a Wren during World War II – from leafy Bexley Heath to the Glasgow docks must have been an eye-opener for her as a teenager on her first ever time away from home!  I imagine she grew up quickly.

Chief Petty Officer Henry Curtis Cook, Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve “H.M.S. President”, who died of appendicitis on 7th September 1915, aged 37.

Rifleman George Faddy Reade, London Irish Rifles, who died on 23rd March 1915 aged 32, the second Great War burial made here.

Leading Signalman Edward John Lloyd, Royal Navy “H.M.S. Glatton”, who died of injuries on 29th September 1918.  The Glatton (below left), a monitor with a crew of over three hundred, had only been commissioned on 31st August 1918, before arriving in Dover on 11th September.  On the evening of 16th September, an explosion ignited the cordite in the Glatton’s midships magazine, killing sixty crewmen, including nearly all the officers, and setting the ship alight, the flames creeping towards the rear magazine that the crew had been unable to flood.  With the ammunition ship Gransha docked only 150 yards away, and fears that a rear magazine explosion aboard the Glatton would ignite the ammunition aboard the Gransha and create a blast capable of devastating much of the town of Dover, the order was given to sink the Glatton, torpedoes and gunfire eventually capsizing her (below right).

Some years after the war, she was, with much difficulty, moved from her hazardous-to-shipping position to a trench dug for her nearer the shore, and today, the next time you find yourself in Dover, check out the car ferry terminal, and then consider that today she still lies beneath, buried in landfill.  Along with the men who died instantly, another 124 were injured, of whom nineteen later died, mainly from burns; Edward Lloyd, who was 25 was, I would think, one of them.  Incidentally, it would be March 1930 before the bodies of those killed aboard the Glatton were safely removed, the men now buried in Gillingham (Woodlands) Cemetery, down in Kent.

Second Corporal F. D. Barber, Royal Engineers, who died on 22nd November 1919.

Just in front of Bruce Wayne, another Second World War burial,…

…before we find the grave of Private Albert Moyes Winter, East Surrey Regiment, who died of pneumonia on 6th February 1917 aged 18.

Lance Corporal Reginald Walter Biggs, East Surrey Regiment, who died on 21st February 1920 aged 37.

Aircraftwoman Second Class Marjorie Rose Bignell, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, who died, rather tragically, on 4th November 1946 aged 26, as explained in the newspaper report below.

Second World War Royal Tank Corps trooper who died in 1942.

Sydney Arthur Edward Davies, Armourer’s Crew, Royal Navy “H.M.S. Vernon”, who died on 11th February 1915 aged 21, and is the earliest Great War CWGC burial here.

Private George James Batchelor, Royal Sussex Regiment, who died on 28th October 1916, aged 38.

Rifleman A. Warren, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, who died on 25th August 1916,…

…and Private William Arthur Lambert, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, who died of wounds on 26th August 1917.

Private A. E. J. Buckingham, Middlesex Regiment, who died on 15th November 1917.

Three more military burials,…

…all three Great War casualties.  On the left,…

…Private Edward James Wood, Royal Army Medical Corps, who died on 2nd February 1919, aged 27.

The two touching headstones are those of, on the left, Private William Charles Tomkins of The Queen’s, and on the right, Guardsman A. Reeve, Coldstream Guards, who died a month apart, on 20th December 1918 & 20th November 1918 respectively.

This does – trust me – refer to Private Tomkins & Guardsman Reeve, but there is no explanation as to why.

Private James R. Jiggins, East Kent Regiment (The Buffs), who died on 14th July 1919 aged 33.

Private J. Vineall, Royal Defence Corps, who died on 17th October 1916.  The Royal Defence Corps was a British Army corps formed in early 1916.

More Second World War burials (above & below).

Home Guard platoon commander…

…killed ‘at his post’ on 18th August 1940, aged 61.  ‘An ordinary Englishman’.  I like that.

Private Bertram Shaw Townend, Manchester Regiment, who died on 7th November 1918, aged 32.

This is a big place to explore,…

…although most of the military headstones appear to be in the areas we have now looked at,…

…the remainder of the cemetery revealing no more CWGC graves,…

…as far as I could see.

The inscription on the side of this damaged memorial says ‘A tribute from his friends and colleagues connected with civil aviation at home and abroad’, and on temporarily removing the cross,…

…which I did put back, I promise, the inscription beneath on this side reads, ‘Albert Percy Sergeant, Capt late R.A.F., who was accidentally killed 26th July 1924, aged 35 years.’  Another to add to the list of ex-R.F.C./R.A.F. pilots who were killed, still flying, in subsequent years.

Not the inscription on this side,…

…but the one on this side,…

…which remembers Private Norman Bernard Kendall, Royal Fusiliers, aged 22, who died of wounds on 13th November 1916 and is buried in Mailly Wood Cemetery, Mailly-Maillet, on the Somme.

Two days later, on 15th November 1916, another man, Lieutenant Valentine Howell Watney, Machine Gun Corps (Infantry), was wounded at Beaumont Hamel, just two miles away from Private Kendall’s grave in Mailly Wood Cemetery.  Watney, whose grave is pictured above, would be evacuated back to Blighty but, sadly, he would die of his injuries nearly three months later, on 3rd February 1917, aged 31.

I dare say there must be quite a number of non-CWGC headstones in this cemetery that remember Great War casualties, but time precludes us finding any more of them.  R.I.P.

I’m afraid to say I failed to find Captain Leonard Barlow, M.C. & 2 Bars.

We’ll finish with the grave of composer, musician & conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died in Croydon in 1912, and is not to be confused with the bloke who wrote ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, who didn’t.