If anyone is responsible for the book coming into being then I blame Chloe, my daughter. It was her question, in 2004, about members of our family who’d been killed in the two World Wars that prompted my diversion from family history research into family military history.

That research proved that members of my family had played their part in both wars and, in three cases, had paid the ultimate price. 

Researching these men and the others who returned proved to be both educational and enjoyable, so when I’d finished gathering what information was available I started to look around for another military research project. The choice was relatively simple as the Town War Memorial is in a very prominent position outside St Edmund’s Church on the main road through Shipston.

A list of the men on the War Memorial was quickly expanded to include the details available from the Commonwealth War Graves website. A search of the Soldiers Died in the Great War database added some more details to each of the WW1 men, but a chance search for people who resided in Shipston brought the main dilemma I’ve had with the book. This search and a similar one for people born in Shipston produced a lot more names than were on the War Memorial.

It was at this point that I visited the Local History Society Museum to see if they knew if anyone had already or was currently carrying out the same research. As soon as I walked in I got a big surprise because there on the wall was another War Memorial. This one turned out to be from the Council School and it contained a slightly different list of names, some already known but some new. The visit confirmed that not only was the Society unaware of any other research going on in that area, but they also said that they had always thought it would be a good project, and would help in any way that they could. The final list of the men being researched was still a bit of a problem though, and when a series of visits to the War Memorials in surrounding villages revealed some of the men on my list, it confirmed my suspicions that on the Soldiers Died in the Great War database Shipston actually means Shipston and district. At this point the list of men was restricted to those on the two War Memorials. The only subsequent change was when I found out that there is a third Memorial in the Library. This is the Adult School Memorial. A brief description is provided at the back of the book for any men who were listed as Shipston-on-Stour and cannot be found on any other Memorial, just in case.

With a fixed list the real work could then begin searching for census details, school records, baptismal records, marriage records, military Medal Index Cards, Battalion War Diaries, Divisional Histories, newspaper articles in fact anything that helped build a picture of either the man or the events leading to his death. At the same time the Local History Society offered to try to get as many photographs of the men as possible, and I started planning a series of visits to various parts of England and Europe, to get photographs of either gravestones or names on memorials where the bodies had never been recovered. All credit to Chloe as she was with me on all bar one of these trips and so has visited forty of the forty-eight graves in six different countries.

And so there we were in 2009, having just passed the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the Great War and the sixty-fifth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, with something approaching a fitting tribute to the men who, having volunteered to serve King and Country, paid the ultimate sacrifice.  

We will remember them.

Mike Wells

Shipston-on-Stour

May 2017