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“If you think, have a kindly thought, If you speak, speak generously, Of those who as heroes fought And died to keep you free”
Set up by the Black Country Society. Our aim is to highlight local men who died in the Great War and how they have been commemorated on war memorials. Its scope covers the whole of the present Dudley Municipal Borough and therefore includes the places which have come within its bounds since 1914.
There are over fifty memorials and the number of names exceeds three thousand. Research on the names has been extensive but inevitably errors and omissions occur. We would like to hear about them concentrated on life and work before 1914, involvement in military campaigns and where each man is buried or commemorated.
Walter Belcher was born at Blackheath and was living at Cradley when he enlisted in the Worcester Territorials. He served with the 2/7th Battalion in the 61st (South Midland) Division which was sent to France in 1916. They were prominent in the later stages of the Somme and then moved to Flanders in 1917 for the long series of battles composing Third Ypres. They were not in the opening battle but he was killed in action during shelling on the 29th August 1917 during the Battle of Langemarck and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot, Cradley and Halesowen Memorials.
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Cradley, Dudley, West Midlands, England
