T14D, Ginchy, November 2015
Dear Mother
I am writing these few lines severely wounded. We have done well our batt. advanced about 3 quarters of a mile. I am laid in a shell hole with 2 wounds in my hip and through my back. I cannot move or crawl. I have been here for 24 hours and never seen a living soul. I hope you will recieve these few lines as I don't expect anyone will come to take me away, but you know I have done my duty out here now for 1 year and 8 months and you will always have the consolation that I died quite happy doing my Duty.
Must give my Best of Love to all the cousins who have been so kind to me time I have been out here. And the best of love to Mother and Harry + all at Swinefleet. XXX
These extraordinary lines were scribbled on a piece of paper by Corporal John Duesbery of 2nd Sherwood Foresters, who attacked the Ginchy Quadrilateral on 15th September. His expectation proved tragically correct, but his belongings, including this letter, were evidently recovered from his body before he was buried, probably in the shellhole in which he lay. The grave marker must have been lost in the subsequent fighting, and his name is now etched amongst the legions of the missing high up on the Thiepval Memorial. In the post war clearances the battlefield was laid out in a grid, and the bodies were recovered and reburied in the many cemeteries that were established during and after the fighting. It is likely that his battlefield grave was somewhere close to this sad and desolate spot, and here he may still lie, though it is more likely that his unidentified remains were recovered, one of an astonishing 274 in the 230 square metres of grid reference T14D, and now rest beneath a stone marked "A Soldier of The Great War, Known Unto God."
(With acknowledgement to the Duesbery family, and to Peter & Tom Barton)
I am writing these few lines severely wounded. We have done well our batt. advanced about 3 quarters of a mile. I am laid in a shell hole with 2 wounds in my hip and through my back. I cannot move or crawl. I have been here for 24 hours and never seen a living soul. I hope you will recieve these few lines as I don't expect anyone will come to take me away, but you know I have done my duty out here now for 1 year and 8 months and you will always have the consolation that I died quite happy doing my Duty.
Must give my Best of Love to all the cousins who have been so kind to me time I have been out here. And the best of love to Mother and Harry + all at Swinefleet. XXX
These extraordinary lines were scribbled on a piece of paper by Corporal John Duesbery of 2nd Sherwood Foresters, who attacked the Ginchy Quadrilateral on 15th September. His expectation proved tragically correct, but his belongings, including this letter, were evidently recovered from his body before he was buried, probably in the shellhole in which he lay. The grave marker must have been lost in the subsequent fighting, and his name is now etched amongst the legions of the missing high up on the Thiepval Memorial. In the post war clearances the battlefield was laid out in a grid, and the bodies were recovered and reburied in the many cemeteries that were established during and after the fighting. It is likely that his battlefield grave was somewhere close to this sad and desolate spot, and here he may still lie, though it is more likely that his unidentified remains were recovered, one of an astonishing 274 in the 230 square metres of grid reference T14D, and now rest beneath a stone marked "A Soldier of The Great War, Known Unto God."
(With acknowledgement to the Duesbery family, and to Peter & Tom Barton)
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