Community again honours those who fell for our freedom

Although we have not all been able to gather together this year to mark Armistice Day as we would like, the community has still honoured those who gave their lives for their country.

In Five Oak Green, the Memorial Cottages built after the Great War of 1914-18 once again proudly display wreaths of poppies in honour of the men of the parish who died in both world wars.

Among those we are remembering are two brothers, Horace and Frank Wakeford, who tragically died within a day of each other in September 1918, less than two months before the end of the Great War.

They were farm workers and the sons of Charles and Emily Wakeford, of Latters Farm, Tudeley, part of the Somerhill Estate, as the Hadlow Estate was then known.

Private Horace Wakeford served with the 16th (Sussex Yeomanry) Battalion, part of the Royal Sussex Regiment.

He died on 18th September 1918, aged 21, and is buried alongside more than 500 of his comrades at the Ste. Emilie Valley Cemetery at Villers-Faucon in France, not far from the border with Belgium.

Part of the 230th Brigade, the Yeomanry took part in the Battle of Epehy which was an attack by Allied forces on the German defensive Hindenburg Line.

Horace’s younger brother Lance Corporal Frank Wakeford died on 19th September, 1918, aged 19.

He served with the 6th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment, and is remembered with honour at the Vis-en-Artois memorial in the Pas de Calais, along with 9,834 of his comrades.

The day before he died, his battalion had also taken part in the fighting at Epehy.

The brothers have been remembered in 2020, as have all the parish’s fallen, with wooden crosses with poppies, bearing their names.

Also standing as a poignant reminder of those who were lost is a Tommy silhouette, a There But Not There installation, first unveiled two years ago to mark the centenary of the end of the Great War, his head bowed in remembrance of his fallen comrades.