234302 Pte. William George Carden British Army 13th Btn. Durham Light Infantry from:Bermondsey, London (d.20th Sep 1917) My grandfather William Carden joined the army in 1914, he was a clerk and served in the Pay Corps in Lichfield. In May 1917 he was compulsorily transferred into the fighting forces, joining the Durham Light Infantry in Flanders on 30th of August 1917. He was killed in action on 20th of September1917 during the Battle of Menin Road, when his battalion were involved in trying to secure a hill nicknamed Tower Hamlets. A bit ironic since he came from Bermondsey. His family understood he had been killed by a shell, but given the number of casualties and the sheer mess of battle it is hard to be sure.
William was 28 when he died and left behind his wife, Charlotte, a son aged 4 and two daughters aged 2 and 10 months. My father remembered the telegram arriving to notify his mother of his father's death, he recalled clinging to her leg saying "don't cry Mummy, don't cry". William's remains were exhumed in 1921 and he is now buried at Tyne Cot Cemetery near Ypres. I gather from the records that it took more than 2 years for my grandmother to get a war pension, she was a milliner but with three young children I'm not sure how she managed to earn enough to feed them. She returned to Ramsgate where she had family, her husbands father was still living and I think he helped.
This is a very unremarkable story but I suspect a very common one. So many men did not last long once they were sent out into the field of battle and so many children were raised without a father by a mother grieving for her husband. When I was 9 my parents took us to Belgium to see our grandfathers grave. Even then I remember being stunned by the acres of gravestones and the ages I read on the memorials of his fellow soldiers. When my own sons were 18, 21 and 22, Tyne Cot was still in my mind and I was so so grateful there was no war going on to so savagely claim and annihilate them.
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