WWI soldier ‘should be on memorial’

A decision not to allow the name of a first world war soldier to be added to Newark’s war memorial has been branded a scandal.

Mr Pete Stevens, who works for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, says William Pride’s name should be on the Memorial to the Fallen in Newark Cemetery.

William, a Royal Engineers sapper, who lived in Newark, committed suicide following frontline service.

His Army record and the coroner’s report show he took his own life “whilst of unsound mind.”

Mr Stevens has been told William does not fit the criteria for inclusion on the memorial.

Mr Stevens said the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had categorised William as a casualty of war with one of its headstones, so his name should be added.

William operated hospital barges that were under constant attack as they transported casualties.

Mr Stevens believes the stigma that would have been attached to William’s suicide was why his name wasn’t included on the 1921 town Roll of Honour.

It was common to omit from war memorials the names of those who took their own lives or were shot for cowardice when they were actually shell-shocked or battle-fatigued — the condition is now recognised as post-traumatic stress disorder.

William’s name was not on the list agreed by Newark Town Council and the Royal British Legion in 2007 when plans for the Memorial to the Fallen were being considered.

“The scandal is not his suicide but the refusal to add him to the Memorial to the Fallen and right that wrong,” said Mr Stevens, of Balderton.

He discovered the omission of William Pride from the memorial by chance during research on another project.

“One can only imagine the noise, the smell and the constant cries of the wounded and the toll this would have taken on a man,” he said.

“I feel it was these horrors and the worsening of William’s disability that drove him to take his own life.

“No one understood post-traumatic stress disorder back then but we do now.

“The Government pardoned those shot for not going over the top and their names have been added to their local memorials, so why not William Pride? We must demonstrate we have moved on.”

Mr Geoff Meakin, from the Newark branch of the Royal British Legion, said: “Mr Pride doesn’t fit the criteria to go on the memorial so will not be added.

“You have to have lived or been living in the old borough of Newark and to have fallen in battle — that’s the difficulty.

“His suicide does not come into it.

“I sympathise and it’s often a contentious issue.

“If you relax the criteria for one, it opens the floodgates. These are the criteria and we must stick to them.”

Mr Stevens said there were 29 graves in Newark Cemetery of men whose names were on the memorial who did not die in battle but from wounds or other effects of their service.

“There is one man whose name appears who died in the sanatorium at Radcliffe in 1925,” said Mr Stevenson

William Pride was an engine driver and fireman with the Trent Navigation Company.

He lived on Bowbridge Road, Newark, with his wife and five children when he was called up for service on September 18, 1916 at the age 40.

He was enlisted into the Water Transport Corps of the Royal Engineers and, 19 days later he was on his way to Mesopotamia where he operated hospital barges ferrying wounded soldiers away from the front.

The barges operated under constant shell-fire.

William developed arthritis in both knees that got so bad he was invalided to India, arriving back in England on June 6, 1918.

He was sent to a camp in Kent and placed on light duties. He was found on September 11, 1918 with his throat cut and a razor in his hand.

Comrades reported he had been depressed.

The clerk to Newark Town Council, Mr Alan Mellor said: “We are and will be looking into this and will be speaking with all appropriate interested parties.”