Percy William Cooper
Ann Kell’s Granddad
My Granddad was killed in action on 30 September 1917. My father, Henry George Cooper, was born on 15 November 1914 and had no recollection of his father. However, I have recently discovered that my father was taken to Great Malvern in Worcestershire when he was about 5 years of age to visit his grandmother and other family members and that their family name was Bartram. Unfortunately I do not have any letters or photographs.
My Granddad was born in 1882. He was a private in the 3/10th Bn, The Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment), 10th Brigade, 4th Division, B.E.F. He was killed in action at Flanders and buried at Duhallow Advanced Dressing Station Cemetery, Ypres, Belgium
This cemetery is believed to have been named after a southern Irish hunt, and was a medical post one mile north of Ypres (now Ieper). The cemetery was begun in July 1917 and in October and November 1918, it was used by the 11th, 36th and 44th Casualty Clearing Stations. The cemetery contains many graves of the artillery and engineers and 41 men of the 13th Company Labour Corps, killed when a German aircraft dropped a bomb on an ammunition truck in January 1918, are buried in Plot II.
After the Armistice, the cemetery was enlarged when graves were brought into this cemetery from isolated sites and a number of small cemeteries on the battlefields around Ypres. Special memorials commemorate a number of casualties known to have been buried in two of these cemeteries, Malakoff Farm Cemetery, Brielen, and Fusilier Wood Cemetery, Hollebeke, whose graves were destroyed by shellfire.
There are now 1,544 Commonwealth casualties of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery, 231 of the burials unidentified. There are also 57 war graves of other nationalities, mostly German, and one Commonwealth burial of the Second World War, which dates from the Allied withdrawal ahead of the German advance of May 1940. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield. I obtained the above information from Malvern’s Roll of Honour.
I intend to visit Great Malvern to see the WW1 Memorial, which is located on the wall of the north aisle of Christchurch Parish Church and to continue my search for more information about my Granddad.
The original exhibition display: Percy William Cooper |