Media – Hintlesham & Chattisham War Memorials (original) (raw)

From part of the Service of Remembrance held in St Nicholas Church, Hintlesham on Sunday 13 November 1916

By this time of year in 1916, the horror of The Great War was all too evident in our villages of Hintlesham and Chattisham. By this time, half way through the war, 12 of the men listed on our memorial in Hintlesham had died and another 2 on the memorial in Chattisham.

By 1916, in villages like ours, everyone would have either lost a relative, a friend, a workmate or someone they simply knew who used to sit right here where we are today.

The villagers of course didn’t know they were only half way through.

"It’ll all be over by Christmas!"

Probably not, they’d said that in 1914 and it didn’t end. They said it in 1915 and it wasn’t over then? When would this lousy war and it’s killing be over and done with?

Perhaps, by November 1916, that patriotic jingoistic enthusiasm for the war that was so evident in 1914 had faded somewhat.

The summer of 1916 saw our local lads and young men, who predominantly worked in the fields we see and pass each day, involved in warfare and killing on an industrial scale never seen, let alone imagined, before.

With the Great War, we tend to think first of trenches and the Western Front, but the summer of 1916 saw the biggest sea battle of the war between the Imperial German High Seas Fleet and the Royal British Navy’s Grand Fleet. It took place 90 miles off the coast of Denmark at Jutland Bank. The battle involved 250 ships and lasted the duration of daylight hours on 31st May – by nightfall nearly 10,000 men were killed and 25 ships lay at the bottom of the North Sea. To this day historians argue over who won and who lost. Stoker Marcus Steward lost. He lost his life that day and is listed on the memorial at Chattisham.

The Battle of the Somme began on 1st July and ended on the 18 November 1916. A million men died or were injured in this the largest battle of the first world war … the British Army alone suffered 57,000 casualties just on the first day … in truth it was a series of battles fought over several months … 5 of the men listed on the memorial outside were killed, lost or died of their injuries during the course of The Somme.

100 years on, the events of 1916 still have the power to shock, to horrify and even to sicken us – no wonder the returning Tommys and Jack Tars wouldn’t talk about it.

Today we remember the names of the fallen. We know fragments of their story, but we can only imagine the grief, the sorrow and total bewilderment of those left behind in Hintlesham & Chattisham as the news of the carnage emerged.

How many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins, mates, friends and neighbours must have sat in these church pews of Hintlesham and Chattisham and prayed for the safe keeping or for the souls of those they loved … in 1916.

Written and read by Gerald Main