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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 Homer came from Cradley and attended Cradley C of E School. He enlisted in the Worcesters just before the outbreak of war in 1914 and was sent to the 4th Battalion, probably joining them in India. Early in 1915 the Worcesters returned and then embarked on the Gallipoli campaign. The landing was successful but thereafter it was a rugged campaign with trench warfare in the woods and gullies that made up the terrain. He was seriously wounded at some point and transferred to St. Andrew's Hospital, Malta. However, he was then sent to a military hospital in Cairo where he died on the 31st October 1915. He is buried in Cairo War Cemetery (I D 23) and commemorated on the Cradley, Halesowen and Cradley C of E School Memorials.
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Cradley, Dudley, West Midlands, England
