© Sue and Julian Owen. Terms and conditions.
Private 242008
2nd/6th Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment)
Remembered with honour as H Baker at the War Memorial at Dunkirk, and appears to be this man, born at Hickmans Green in 1889, the son of George and Catherine Baker. George came from Hickmans Green abd Catherine from Teynham. In the 1891 census the family were living at Broomfield, near Reculver, and by the 1901 census they had moved to Chatham, where Harry’s father George was working as a miller; Harry is listed on the 1901 census as 12 years old, one of four sons, and he had an older sister Ada. In 1915, Harry married Florence Sykes in Hackney, and the marriage certificate gives his occupation as Barman.
No service record has yet been found, but Private Harry Samuel Baker is remembered with honour at Cologne Southern Cemetery in Germany. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that Harry was a prisoner of war.
The CWGC website includes the following additional information:
Cologne Southern Cemetery
More than 1,000 Allied prisoners and dozens of German servicemen
were buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery during the First World War. Commonwealth
forces entered Cologne on 6 December 1918, less than a month after the Armistice,
and the city was occupied under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles until January
1926. During this period the cemetery was used by the occupying garrison. In 1922
it was decided that the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died all over Germany
should be brought together into four permanent cemeteries at Kassel, Berlin, Hamburg
and Cologne. Over the course of the following year, graves were transferred to Cologne
Southern Cemetery from over 180 different burial grounds in Hanover, Hessen, the
Rhine and Westphalia.
There are now almost 2,500 First World War servicemen buried
or commemorated in the Commonwealth plots at Cologne. The Cologne Memorial, located
inside the shelter building at the entrance to the Commonwealth plots, commemorates
25 British and Irish servicemen who died in Germany and who have no known grave.
Of these, 19 are known to have died as prisoners but their places of burial are not
recorded. The remaining six died after the Armistice by drowning and their bodies
were not recovered. The Commonwealth section of the cemetery also contains over 130
Second World War graves, mostly those of servicemen who died with the occupying forces.
There are, in addition, 676 non-war graves and 29 burials of other nationalities.
Commonwealth
Prisoners of War in Germany during the First World War
Between the outbreak of war
in August 1914 and the Armistice of November 1918, the German forces captured almost
300,000 Commonwealth servicemen on the Western Front. Approximately one third of
these prisoners were held in German occupied territory in France and Belgium, but
most were transported to camps located throughout Germany. In common with the other
belligerent states, Germany was poorly equipped to house, feed and clothe large numbers
of enemy troops, but prisoners of war had been granted certain rights under international
agreements established at Geneva in 1864 and at The Hague in 1899 and 1907. The Red
Cross also monitored conditions in the camps and ensured that food, clothing, and
personal correspondence sent from Britain was safely delivered to prisoners. In June
1917, and again in July 1918, the British and German governments agreed to exchange
prisoners who were too badly wounded to fight again, and hundreds of prisoners were
repatriated through the Netherlands. Finally, the fear that the thousands of German
prisoners in Britain and France would be mistreated in retaliation meant that Allied
POWs often enjoyed quite humane treatment. This was especially the case for officer
prisoners, who were segregated into separate camps and not forced to work.
Despite
these various checks on the mistreatment of prisoners, conditions in German camps
varied widely and as many as 12,000 Commonwealth servicemen died in captivity. Some
of these men were badly wounded when taken prisoner and died shortly after arriving
in Germany. Some prisoners also died as a result of violence perpetrated by their
captors, but although violence was common, particularly during the first year of
the war, the killing of prisoners was rare. Non-commissioned officers and privates
were often forced to work and some died of exhaustion or accidents while labouring
in coalmines, stone quarries or steel works. Yet by far the most common cause of
prisoner death in wartime Germany was disease. Prisoners weakened by wounds, poor
diet, or fatigue were particularly susceptible to the effects of disease and an outbreak
of typhus in 1915 and the influenza epidemic of 1918 had a devastating effect on
the Allied prisoner population.
The Cologne Memorial
The memorial takes the form of
panels set inside the north shelter building at the entrance to the Commonweatlh
plots in Cologne Southern Cemetery. It commemorates 25 servicemen of the United Kingdom
who died in Germany and who have no known grave. Of these, 19 are known to have died
as prisoners and their places of burial are not recorded. The other six died after
the Armistice by drowning and their bodies were not recovered.
*The following cemeteries
are among those from which graves were brought to Cologne:
AACHEN MILITARY CEMETERY,
197 burials of sailors 1914-1919.
BONN (POPPELSDORF) CEMETERY, 133 service and one
civilian burial, all of 1919. The 47th General Hospital and the 21st Casualty Clearing
Station were posted at Bonn.
BUDERICH (FORT BLUCHER) PRISONERS OF WAR CEMETERY, 39
burials of 1914-1919.
COBLENZ FRENCH MILITARY CEMETERY, KARTHAUSE, 59 burials of 1915-1918.
Coblenz was occupied by United States troops in December 1918.
DORTMUND SOUTH-WESTERN
CEMETERY, 53 burials of 1914-1918.
DUISBURG TOWN CEMETERY, 35 burials of 1914-1919.
DULMEN
PRISONERS OF WAR CEMETERY, 96 burials of 1915-1918.
DUREN NEW TOWN CEMETERY, 79 burials,
mostly of 1919. The 11th Stationary Hospital and the 17th Casualty Clearing Station
were posted at Duren.
DUSSELDORF NORTH CEMETERY, 24 burials of 1915-1918.
ESSEN SOUTH-WESTERN
CEMETERY, 21 burials of 1917-1918.
EUSKIRCHEN NEW TOWN CEMETERY, 75 service and one
civilian burials of 1918-1919. The 42nd Stationary Hospital and the 47th Casualty
Clearing Station were posted at Euskirchen.
FRIEDRICHSFELD PRISONERS OF WAR CEMETERY,
70 burials of 1916-1918.
FRIEMERSHEIM CEMETERY, 20 burials of 1918.
GELSENKIRCHEN WEST
CEMETERY, 21 burials of 1917-1918.
GEROLSTEIN MILITARY CEMETERY, 25 burials of 1918.
JULICH
MILITARY, 39 burials of 1915-1918.
MULHEIM-AM-RUHR OLD TOWN CEMETERY, 49 burials of
1915-1918.
MUNSTER (HAUSPITAL) PRISONERS OF WAR CEMETERY, 161 burials of 1914-1918.
RECKLINGHAUSEN PROTESTANT, CATHOLIC AND SOUTH CEMETERIES, 26 burials of 1916-1918.
TRIER TOWN CEMETERY, 48 burials of 1917-1918.
Sources:
National Archives in association with Ancestry.com. 1891, 1901 and 1911 England census database.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission website: CWGC.org
Photos - CWGC
Cologne Southern Cemetery