The lone bugler

DURING THE YEARS following the Great War of 1914-18, Remembrance Sunday was observed by a lone bugler who sounded the last post from the market place, now the town centre.

He was Richard Newton Pattison, a local tailor, best known as bandmaster of the last Bourne Town Band which had been founded in 1921. He was a versatile musician, playing many instruments as well as the trumpet, cornet and bugle, although failing sight made it impossible for him to continue the tradition and in 1956, the present war memorial was built in South Street and this has been the central point for the ceremony ever since.

Remembrance Sunday which will be observed this weekend (November 8th), is held to remind us of the horrors of war and those who lost their lives in conflict. The first war memorial in Bourne was the extension to the old Butterfield Hospital in North Road, officially opened in 1921, but there is no list of the men who lost their lives during the Great War of 1914-18 which has never been exactly determined.

The first roll of honour was inscribed on a wooden plaque (pictured above) which can be found on the west wall inside the Abbey Church and contains the names of 91 men who died but this was superseded by the permanent stone monument in the gardens alongside the river in South Street, the work of the architects W E Norman Webster and Son who based their design on the cenotaph in Whitehall, London.

By the time the memorial was erected, the original figure on the church board had increased to 97 men and their names are inscribed there although there have been suggestions that the figure is nearer 140 and therefore more than 40 names are still missing. However, this memorial also includes the names of 32 men who did not return from the Second World War of 1939-45 and a further three who died on active service before the century ended.

The war memorial was unveiled and dedicated on Sunday 16th September 1956, the land being purchased from the Marquess of Exeter by Bourne United Charities in 1945 to be preserved as a permanent open space for the town and part was used to remember those who had fallen in the two recent world wars. A memorial fund was opened and the public were asked to contribute with the result that £1,700 had either been donated or promised by 110 subscribers and £200 of this had come from people living outside the parish. In addition, a benefaction under the will of Alderman Thomas Whyment Atkinson, of Haconby Hall, who died in 1954, provided the rental income from 142 acres of land towards the project.

There are two plaques containing the names of those from Bourne who fell in battle. One on the south side of the cenotaph lists those who lost their lives in the First World War and that on the north side contains the names of those who died in the Second World War and subsequent conflicts in other parts of the world.

The first man named on the War Memorial from the Great War is Harry Allen, an infantryman serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who was killed in France in 1916. He was the son of Albert and Frances Allen, of Meadowgate, Bourne. He was mortally wounded during a trench raid while his battalion was dug in at the notorious Ploegstert Woods sector in France, universally known to the troops as "Plugstreet". Captain Robert Graves, of the Royal Welch Regiment, who later became one of the Great War's celebrated poets, was severely wounded in another action there about the same time.

The last name of the last soldier who died in the Great War to be added to the Roll of Honour is that of Private George Coverley of the Labour Corps who died from his wounds on 16th December 1918, aged 35. He had been overlooked when the memorial was built and approaches from his relatives to remedy the omission were at first refused but the case was taken up by the Royal British Legion and his name was added in 1995.

The addition, together with the names of three servicemen who had died in more recent wars, William Dodd, Richard Jennings and John Booth, was dedicated at a special service on VE Day, May 8th.

When the war ended, many grieving parents refused to believe that missing sons were dead and continued seeking information about them through public notices in the newspapers. A poignant example of this which reflects the heartache of war for those at home, appeared in a local newspaper on Friday 24th January 1919: "Private George Hare, No 140820, of the A Company, 34th Machine Gun Company, was taken prisoner on 10th April 1918. Nothing has been heard of him since July 25th last. If anyone can give any information it will be gladly welcomed by his parents at 26, Hereward-street, Bourne." There was no news and the name of G Hare appears on the War Memorial.

Richard Pattison, the bugler who first marked Remembrance Sunday in Bourne, was himself a veteran of the Great War, having served with the Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force, and a founder member of the local branch of the British Legion. His brother Ralph, a lance corporal with the Lincolnshire Regiment, was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and is commemorated on the Bourne memorial although four other brothers survived the war.

He died in September 1959, aged 80, but his name has not been forgotten because his daughter is still with us. Miss Violet Pattison, now 84, who spent much of her life working as a cook at the old Butterfield Hospital, lives in Harrington Street where the brass instrument her father played on those occasions has pride of place on the living room wall.

Photographed by Rex Needle