Waterloo veteran perhaps?

If the recording of 'war memorials' is interpreted quite loosely, as appears to be the policy of the UKNIWM, then some interesting stories emerge.

On the south wall of the chancel at Urswick parish church, facing the graveyard, is an old and rather weathered neo-classical funereal monument. The inscription on the central panel, inscribed in fine copper-plate, reads;

The non-commissioned Officers and Privates of the Furness Cuirassiers erected this monument in the memory of THOMAS GARDNER their Drill Sergeant formerly of the first Regiment of Life Guards who was killed by a fall from his Horse on the 21st Day of April 1821 in the 32nd Year of his Age

After the French Revolutionary wars and the defeat of Napoleon the armed forces were disbanded. Many of the veterans, particularly officers, subsequently raised units of volunteers. One such was the Furness Troop of Yeomanry known as The Furness Cuirassiers. They were raised at Ulverston on 22nd September 1819 under the command of Captain Thomas Richard G. Braddyll, formerly Captain and Lieut. Colonel in the Coldstream Guards. On 15th May 1828 the troop amalgamated with other local volunteer units to become the Lancashire Yeomanry Cavalry.

Given his age and the date of his death it is reasonable to assume that he may have fought in the Peninsula or at Waterloo. However, various early nineteenth century rolls, available online, do not include a Thomas Gardner serving with the Life Guards during the Napoleonic wars so any certainty about his service history must reamain unresolved.

A country churchyard

Most churches and churchyards in the county have multiple memorials of one sort or another. That at Whicham, a little chapel tucked beneath the slopes of Black Combe, has more than most.

Best known perhaps for having the grave of Tom Mayson, a local man who won the Victoria Cross at Passchendaele in 1917, it hosts a number of other memorials that illustrate the ubiquity of loss in the conflicts of the twentieth century.

Three unknown merchant seamen are buried here, their place marked with Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones. Two of them share a common grave and must have been found on the beach off Silecroft on the same day in April 1941. They are a stark reminder of the Battle of the Atlantic during which long campaign over 50,000 merchant seamen of many nations perished, their bodies occassionally thrown up by the ocean and given anonymous burial. The courage, commitment & tenacity of those remarkable men is rarely acknowledged.

Check out http://www.gordonmumford.com/m-navy4.htm and the Tower Hill memorial on the CWGC website for the endless lists of 35,808 names.

Next to this are two further CWGC headstones marking the graves of two Australian airmen, 27 year old Corporal Clifford Amos of South Australia & A/C John Francis aged 22 of New South Wales. Both were crew members of a Short Sunderland flying boat of number 10 squadron RAAF that came down in the sea off Anglesey. Their bodies were washed up at Silecroft some time later.

On the south side of the church is a plot belonging to the Caddy - Huddlestone family that contains a family headstone and two more CWGC graves. The earlier war grave is that of Private Tom Caddy who, having served with the Machine Gun Corps, died of the effects of gas poisoning in March 1920. The later one is that of his nephew, Sgt Tom Huddlestone, Wireless Operator/Air Gunner, RAF, who died on October 2, 1944 aged 19. On the family headstone is the name of Annie May Huddlestone, nee Caddy, sister of one, mother of the other.

Inside the church are three memorials, one each for the world wars and a copy of the citation for Tom Mayson's VC. The orginal was, unbelievably, stolen in the early 1990s.