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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.
John Coley attended Halesowen C of E school and enlisted in the Worcester Territorials. He joined the 2/7th Battalion and from May 1916 they spent their time training in Artois. In November they were sent to the Somme and on the 17th they huirriedly took over part of the front line after a British attack had suffered serious casualties. Patrols were sent out, wounded men were retrieved but casualties were taken from enemy shelling. Sergeant John Coley was one of four killed in action on the 18th November 1917 and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and the Halesowen and Halesowen C of E school Memorials.
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ST JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH, High St, Halesowen, Dudley, West Midlands, England, B63 3BB
