It can't escape your notice that the names on the Ibstock war memorial are not in strict alphabetical order. We can make an intelligent guess as to why this is, and clearly from the CWGC entries it's not by date of death. So how are they ordered?

Really it's was only going to be any surviving service papers that might reveal the answer. Presuming I could find any, there was still the question as to how they might be scattered amongst the names. What was needed were papers of about three consecutive names.

In the end I found papers for roughly 25% of the men and fortuitously these fell kindly to give more than one run of three consecutive names. So as you might have guessed, within each letter of the alphabet the men are ordered by date of joining. For example:

1. Badcock - 16.11.14
   
2. Blecher - 21.6.15
   
3. Benn - 20.9. 15
   

This fact in itself was helpful in eliminating possibles when trying to identify names.

But I can't say which "Robert Holland" is named on the memorial as my luck did not extend to finding the service papers of both possible men, nor of those who preceed and follow them on the memorial.

Until tommorrow .....