Lest we Forget - Island's World War One Soldiers Remembered

Sunday 03 July 2016

One hundred years after the bloodiest battle in British military history two new memorials have been unveiled to remember those Jerseymen who fought in the First World War.

It’s estimated more than 8,000 Islanders saw action in the Great War and that almost a thousand were killed. Various memorials around the Island – in churches, parish halls, schools, and of course, the cenotaph – honour the fallen, but yesterday two new ones were unveiled.

The ceremonies were timed to tie in with the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. It lasted just over four months and saw more than a million allied casualties. On the first day alone 20,000 British troops were killed and a further 37,000 injured. Amongst them were volunteers from the Island.

The first memorial – a traditional granite farmyard arch – was unveiled at the Weighbridge near the petanque terrain, and has been paid for under Planning’s Percentage for Art initiative. It makes developers of major projects fund a work of public art – in this case Comprom and Dandara. Engraved in the floor below the arch is a line from Robert Laurence Binyon’s poem For The Fallen. “They went with songs to the battle, they were young, straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow’.

The other work of art is off to France – although part of it is staying the Island. It’s a standing stone and was unveiled by the Bailiff at a special ceremony in Howard Davis Park. The Jersey Field Squadron will now take it to the village of Guillemont where the Pals fought in September 1916. The core of the stone though will form the focal point of the Island’s ceremony to mark the centenary of the end of the Great War in 2018.