You might well ask why someone “down south” would be interested in the Ibstock war memorial. The answer is simple, the person I am is because one man died and another lived. The man who died was John Henry Storer, my Grandmother's first husband, and the man who lived was my Grandfather Albert Burge.

We don''t exactly know how John and my Grandmother met, she had spent her whole life in a small part of what is now South West London. But it must have been while John was back in Blighty recovering from being gassed. Theirs was the briefest of marriages, for John was sent back to France within the fortnight and was killed three months later.

Albert got through the whole thing and came home to start the rest of his life. It was his good fortune to met Mrs Storer and the rest as they say, is my history.

So this blog is for John, and all those other men from Ibstock, and its surroundings, who marched away never to return.

It was in 2008 when I first turned my attention to the Ibstock memorial. I was bogged down on some other work. I was conscious that time was passing, and Martin Edwards' Roll of Honour site was getting very busy, yet I wanted to put something on the web about Ibstock. After making rapid progress, I was left with a core of unidentified names which held me up.

This is where I should explain one thing. Disability meant I was never going to get to Ibstock, not even to get some photos. But I was extremely lucky to make contact with another forum member, Adam Llewellyn who not only took photos of the Central Avenue memorial but helped with some MIC look ups etc. If you are still out there Adam, I've not forgotten. Unfortunately, communications with Martin Edwards at Roll of Honour broke down, and things have just been mothballed for nearly two years.

Finally, I resolved to make one last effort to identify those who were a mystery to me, and in the last few day have tried to bring things to a close. I never imagined I was the first person to go through this exercise, neither have I attempted to write any kind of biography of these men, however short. Service papers have survived for about 25% of them, and I will add a little to the story of some of them in due course. But what I did discover in the last fortnight was a work of monumental proportions on the War memorials of Leicestershire was recently published by Michael Doyle.

http://www.selfpublishingdirect.co.uk/author_sites/world_war_1_roll_of_honour.html

I've never seen a copy, so it would be interested to know if I've added anything new. There is also an ambitious project being undertaken by Leicestershire County Council which is in part based on Michael Doyle's book.

http://www.leics.gov.uk/index/environment/naturalenvironment/heritagewardens/heritagewardens_projects/warmemorials.htm

The memorial photos will be posted tomorrow, together with the 81 names of the fallen from the two Great War panels. I'll tell you how an 90 year old error was discovered and about another link between the Ibstock memorial and my family...