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Boughton, Dunkirk & Hernhill
War Memorials



HARRY SAMUEL BAKER


Private   242008   

2nd/6th Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment)


who died on 27 August 1918     Age 29

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

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