The Fallen of Marden 1914-1919, by Richard Anthony Collins
Published by the Marden History Group, 126 pages. A4 size spiral bound booklet (N5430)
Marden is a village in Kent, and lies several miles south of Maidstone, and this booklet provides a fascinating and very detailed record of men from the village who served in the First World War.
From the introduction: The First World War should surely have been "the war to end wars". The human cost was so appalling that most people considered such destruction could never happen again. Although it was inevitably surpassed as the bloodiest in history, the total casualties suffered by the British Empire - almost a million soldiers dead and two million wounded - were significantly higher than in the Second World War, so that for the British it is the First World War that remains the "Great War".
It was also the first truly global conflict, with British forces engaged in such diverse theatres as the Middle East (including Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and Palestine), the Eastern Front (including Greece and the Balkans), and Africa. But it was the mud and futility of the Western Front that left the deepest mark. Mons, Ypres, Loos, the Somme, Passchendaele - the dreadful litany continues to strike a chord in our collective memory.
The scale of the sacrifice touched every city, town and village in Britain, and there was a great determination that the fallen should never be forgotten. Since the government refused to allow repatriation of the dead, the bereaved were left with no physical focus for their grief. As a result, communities across the country began to raise funds and erect memorials to their lost sons, husbands and fathers.
And yet, with the passage of time the dead have been largely forgotten. It is now ninety years since the outbreak of the First World War, and there can be very few left who remember the men commemorated on Britain's war memorials. They have become little more than names to be read out each November on Remembrance Day - we honour their memory without knowing who they really were.
This booklet is an attempt to provide some background to the lives of the men from the Marden area that fell during the Great War of 1914-1918. The majority are commemorated on the war memorials in Marden. However, the men named on the Collier Street memorial have also been included - even though the ecclesiastical district of Collier Street was officially within the neighbouring parish of Yalding, most of the soldiers would have considered themselves to be men of Marden.
Although most towns and villages in Britain have external monuments, with the ubiquitous stone cross or obelisk, both the Marden war memorials and the Collier Street war memorial are marble tablets mounted on the inside walls of the churches. The Marden memorials carry the names of 71 servicemen, whilst the smaller Collier Street memorial has only 27 names but three of these can also be found on the Marden Parish Church memorial - a total of 95 individuals. The ages of the casualties listed range from just 18 years up to 44 years; the earliest death was on 13th September 1914, whilst the last man died on 7th November 1919. Some of the men had only a loose association with the village, whilst others came from families that can still be found in Marden to this day. But they were all local heroes. Hopefully, this booklet will go some small way towards helping to preserve their memory....
The condition of the booklet is generally very good. The covers are clean and bright, the spiral spine is tight and intact and all pages are clean, intact, unblemished and tightly bound. Has a small price sticker on rear side cover
| Condition | New |