The Lonely Boys

Foreign Military Graves

On Remembrance Sunday last year I visited the military war graves at Tonbridge Cemetery. The grass had been freshly mown, and a single poppy tribute placed at the foot of each memorial where British, German and Italian soldiers lay at rest, side by side.  Each inscribed stone stood in silent and peaceful dignity in the low November sunshine. 

I first visited this quiet place with my German mother who made sure someone remembered these fallen soldiers each year.  She affectionally called them 'Die Einsamen Jungen', the Lonely Boys, as she was convinced there would be nobody to visit these young men, all who had been laid to rest so far from their homes and families.

Heinrich Bischoff - German Grenadier- aged 27 years

Equally poignant is the row of twelve memorials to local men who were never to return to their loved ones ... lost to graves on foreign soil.  Amongst them an inscription to 'Husband and Father', a local man, Alfred Edward Barnes of the Royal Artillery who died a POW, at the young age of 34, buried in Kanchanaburi, Siam.  Another to a 'Dear Son', Peter Terry, pilot in the RAF interred at Bari, Italy whose parents at least had a tribute to their son who didn't come home to them.

Other burial places of fallen local boys and men inscribed on the lines of memorial stones are the Cassino Military Cemetery, and Assisi in Italy.  Dreiborn and Dusseldorf in Germany. Also mentioned are four service men lost at sea, and two young soldiers whose resting place became the foreign soil of France ... one of whom was 22 year old Gerald Alfred Bathurst, a Tank Wireless Operator, killed in action in Normandy.

Every name represents a family torn apart, fatherless children, a mother's son, a wife's husband, or lover never to return home.

On Sunday I will carry on my mother's tradition, and take a stroll through the headstones at Tonbridge Cemetery to remember those she called the 'Die Einsamen Jungen' ...  the Lonely Boys

English Military Memorials for Servicemen buried abroad