WILLIAM JENKINS

[Elma]

I am looking for a grave and possible memorial for William Jenkins. I have found his army records. He served in The East Surrey Regiment (13th Service Batt). William died of his wounds 12 Apr 1918 in France.
His Regimental number was 13734. Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?
With thanks ELMA

[Peter Goodey]

You need Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/ca...INS,%20WILLIAM

There is no known grave.

The "Soldiers Died" database adds that he was born in Tooting and enlisted in Wandsworth but presumably you already knew that.

[Elma]

Thanks Peter
I had seen that but I was confused as on the transcript of 'UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919' it says place of death France, so I wonder how Commonwealth Graves Commission have him on a memorial in Belgium! Now there might be a logical reason for this. I don't know how it works. I was also wondering didn't most people get on a war memorial here?
Perhaps another stupid question but why isn't there a known grave?

[Peter Goodey]

on the transcript of 'UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919' it says place of death France

It actually says France and Flanders

There's quite a bit of information on the CWGC site, not just lists of names. For example among the details of the Ploegsteert Memorial it says "The memorial serves the area from the line Caestre-Dranoutre-Warneton to the north, to Haverskerque-Estaires-Fournes to the south, including the towns of Hazebrouck, Merville, Bailleul and Armentieres, the Forest of Nieppe, and Ploegsteert Wood". In other words Belgium and France.

It's worth reading the cemetery historical information.

Also on the same site under "Panel List" there is an explanation that "individuals are commemorated in this way when their loss has been officially declared by their relevant service but there is no known burial for the individual, or in circumstances where graves cannot be individually marked, or where the grave site has become inaccessible and unmaintainable".

Other than that I don't think we can tell why there is no known grave.. "Died of wounds" seems to suggest that there was once an identifiable body. Perhaps they just lost track of things in the confusion of war.

The unit war diary might be interesting. Except in exceptional circumstances, it won't mention him by name but should tell you where the unit was at the time and what they were up to.

https://discovery.nationalarchives.go...s?uri=C7354277

[Lesley Robertson]

During the actual war, people were often buried near the aid stations where they died, with temporary markers. After the war, when the formal cemeteries we know today were formed, the bodies were collected and re buried. Many markers had been lost as the Front moved backwards and forwards, many were so badly injured that even when being nursed, they couldn't say who they were - without something in their pockets, or a surviving comrade, there wasn't much that could be done.

Visit any of the cemeteries and you'll see many graves marked "known only to God", or "a soldier of the xxxxx regiment" (or a sailor or an airman). For the greatest part, these are the lads whose names are on the memorials, together with those whose graves were the ships or planes that now lie on the sea bed.

Apart from the official monuments of the CWGC, there are the local ones set up in towns and villages. These are completely separate, and inclusion on any given memorial seems to have mostly been based on information from families, so it's a bit hit and miss. When I traced the names on the village monuments in my One Place Study, most of them were indeed born and bred locally, but a couple had just worked in the parish, and one set of brothers had never lived there, but their parents did after the war. A couple of lads who'd been born and raised in the parish were on monuments where they'd worked, and another couple seem to have missed out on a local monument completely.