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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.
Lewis Biggs came from Bristol but was living in Stourbridge by the time of the Great War. He enlisted in the Gloucesters and joined the 1/6th Battalion. In 1916 they were closely involved in the Battle of the Somme and had fought at Ovillers and the Transloy Ridges. They spent the winter months of 1917 in the same area and, when the German forces retired to the Hindenburg Line in March, they advanced through Peronne and over the Somme. They were ordered into the front line at Tincourt and suffered a few casualties from the retreating enemy. Private Lewis Biggs was one of these and was killed in action on the 30th March. He is commemorated on the Thiepval, Stourbridge and St. Thomas's church Memorials.
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Market Street, Stourbridge, West Midlands, DY8 1AQ
