War Memorials: Stories Behind the Stones

In a tribute to Remembrance Day, we asked James Forryan to investigate some of the stories and mysteries behind Sussex war memorials and those that they commemorate

Wherever you live in the UK, whether in Sussex or beyond, the chances are that you’re never very far from a war memorial. Although there’s no definitive answer as to exactly how many there are in Britain, recent surveys have estimated there are as many as 100,000 memorial sites across the length and breadth of the country. Approximately 700 of these are located in Sussex, commemorating some 31,000 servicemen and women.

Some of these, like the Chattri Memorial in Brighton, stand as grand monuments that can be seen from miles away; others take the much more modest form of simple stone tablets, often secreted away inside churches and chapels. Regardless of size or stature, each has its own story to tell, and while these structures have become such familiar fixtures in our towns and villages that they are often easily overlooked, few areas of our heritage hold quite the same level of poignancy.

The UK’s oldest war memorial is reputed to be the one situated atop the Clifton Downs in Bristol, originally erected in 1797 in memory of soldiers killed during the Seven Years War. The vast majority, however, emerged in the wake of the first and second world wars – partly the result of the extraordinary number of casualties sustained in those conflicts, but also the result of an agreement between Britain and other Allied countries that effectively banned the repatriation of the dead, owing to the impracticality of transporting them to be buried on home soil.

One of the most catastrophic losses of life came on 30 June 1916. Often referred to as ‘the day Sussex died’, the date marks an offensive in which some 2,000 South Downers went ‘over the top’ as part of an operation intended as a diversion to a larger attack the next day – one that would lead to one the first world war’s most infamous episodes; the Battle of the Somme. Of those 2,000, less than 900 lived to tell the tale. Many of those killed in action on that fateful morning are commemorated in understated fashion on a stone plaque located inside St Andrew’s church in Steyning.

While most war memorials display the names of multiple fallen soldiers, some are dedicated to individuals, often commissioned by their families. One of the more famous instances can be found at St Bartholomew’s in Burwash, bearing the name of Lieutenant John Kipling. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because John was the only son of author and poet Rudyard Kipling. Enlisted as an officer with the help of his father, John served in the army for less than six months before he disappeared in battle. Eight days earlier, his final letter home requested a new identification disc – used to identify the bodies of soldiers in the event they were killed on the battlefield – after his original one had been lost.

Evidently, the replacement never reached him. Rudyard Kipling’s long and agonising search to find out what had happened to his missing son is well-documented, with the Nobel Prize winner spending the next four years gathering eyewitness reports and concluding that John had gone missing on September 27, 1915, during the Battle of Loos. In the midst of his search, Kipling became heavily involved with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and was eventually appointed as their literary advisor. Indeed, many war graves of unknown soldiers bear the Kipling-penned inscription ‘A soldier of the Great War, known unto God.’

Sadly, Kipling passed away without ever finding out the full truth of what had happened to his son. However, in 1992 the CWGC amended the inscription on the grave of an unnamed soldier at Loos cemetery in France to bear John Kipling’s name. This prompted much debate, but eventually a researcher named Joanna Lugg, writing for the Western Front Association, was able to confirm that the body of the unknown soldier was indeed that of John Kipling. The inscription on the memorial at Burwash, commissioned years earlier, had proven to be correct.

(images: IWM / Deryck11795)

One long-standing mystery had been solved, but many others remain. One of the more unusual enigmas created by the region’s war memorials begins with an inscription on a small plaque in the East Sussex village of Bishopstone. Along with the names of nine men who perished during the first world war are five others who died during WWII. What is unusual in this case is that one of these named as Nell Standish-Barry – and also as Nell St John Montague. The mystery stems not from the fact Nell was a woman, nor even from the fact her alias is also listed on the memorial. What makes Nell’s inclusion odd is that she was documented to have died a civilian death. It has been speculated that she may have served as a spy, but no official documents have ever confirmed this.

Whatever the truth, Nell was certainly an interesting woman; born in Jaipur, India, she became an actress who starred in many films during the 1920s and claimed to have clairvoyant powers taught to her by the Maharaja himself. Her reputed psychic abilities gained credence when, while entertaining Lord Kitchener as a dinner guest, she predicted he would die at sea. Just weeks later, Kitchener was aboard the HMS Hampshire when it was sunk off the coast of the Orkney Islands, drowning him along with 736 others.

Nell St. John Montague

While war memorials can both create and solve mysteries, they also educate the public on some of the lesser-known aspects of these sprawling conflicts. When film director Sam Mendes released his war epic 1917, actor Laurence Fox was forced to apologise for his misguided assertion that the casting of Sikh actors as soldiers in the film was ‘forcing diversity’ onto viewers. If only he’d paid a visit to Brighton’s Chattri Memorial, located in the Patcham downs above the city, he’d have been aware that not only Sikhs but Hindus and Muslims too all fought for Britain during the great war. Many of those who returned injured were treated at the Royal Pavilion, temporarily transformed into an infirmary, while those who didn’t recover were cremated in accordance with their religious traditions at the Chattri site.

The monument itself was largely the result of efforts by Brighton mayor Sir John Otter, who was determined that the contribution of Indian soldiers to the war effort should not be forgotten. Indeed, sometimes memorials are built as the result of dogged determination on the part of an individual. That was certainly true in the case of one of Sussex’s newest memorials, located on the clifftops of Beachy Head. The RAF Bomber Command Memorial, unveiled in 2012, is the result of the efforts of Joe Williams, a Bomber Command veteran himself, who spent many years raising funds for a monument dedicated to the 125,000 bomber pilots, navigators and gunners who lost their lives in WWII. Joe’s efforts serve as an important reminder that, sometimes, all it takes for someone to be remembered is for one person to remember them… and remind the rest of us, lest we forget.

(image: IWM / David Dixon)