First World War Jersey soldier’s name is finally added to grave

First World War Jersey soldier’s name is finally added to grave

Major Octavius Darby-Griffith was killed fighting in the Third Battle of the Aisne on 27 May 1918 and listed as lost in action, with no known grave.

Thanks to a three-year quest by David Tattersfield, vice-chairman of the Western Front Association, to discover what happened to his body, the soldier’s final resting place is known after 100 years.

Until Wednesday’s ceremony in Ville-aux-Bois-lès-Pontavert cemetery outside Rheims, the gravestone was marked as that of an ‘unknown Major, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment’.

This simple inscription was a great help to Mr Tattersfield, who researched army and national archive records to convince the Ministry of Defence and Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) that the grave belonged to Major Darby-Griffith before they would agree to change the headstone.

Mr Tattersfield attended the service, along with the military attaché from the British Embassy in Paris, Col Christopher Borneman, representatives from the Royal British Legion and the CWGC and the Mayor of Ville-aux-Bois-lès-Pontavert.

‘It was an honour to represent the Western Front Association at this very unusual ceremony, as it is not often that the graves of unknown soldiers are identified after 100 years,’ Mr Tattersfield said.

‘While it was very pleasing that the Major Darby-Griffith grave has the appropriate headstone, there are many thousands of other unknown soldiers whose final resting-places remain unknown.’

Major Darby-Griffith was born on 2 September 1871 in Monmouth, South Wales. He enlisted in the British Army as a ‘boy soldier’ aged 15, going on to serve for more than two decades, the majority of which was spent in Jersey when the Island was militarised with barracks at St Peter and Fort Regent.

He married a local girl, Alice Roberts, at St James’s Church. In 1910, when he left the army after 23 years of ‘exemplary’ service, he was attached to the permanent staff of the 2nd Royal Militia, Island of Jersey.

He took over the Forester’s Arms at Beaumont and the 1911 census records show him living at the pub with his wife and their three daughters.

When war broke out in 1914, even though he was 43, he enlisted and rose though the ranks from Honorary Lieutenant to acting Major in the 9th Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment by April 1918. He saw action across the Western Front – including at the Battle of the Somme and in the Ypres Salient – and was wounded three times.

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