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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.
Samuel Collett lived at 18 West Street, Dudley and was a regular soldier with the Worcesters. He had probably completed his years with the Colours but, as a Reservist, returned to his old battalion, the 2nd Worcesters, on the outbreak of war. In three months they endured the long retreat from Mons and then the advance back to the Aisne in September after the decisive victory of the Battle of the Marne. The switch of the main German attack to Flanders then meant that the battalion had to move quickly to the defence of Ypres. The Worcesters took part in the remarkable action at Gheluvelt on the 30th October which halted the German advance on Ypres. Again it was a decisive event in which a bayonet charge repulsed the enemy. There was one final battle on the 11th November at Nonne Boschen and then the fighting was confined to muddy trench warfare. Private Samuel Collett was killed in action on the 14th and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial and on the Dudley and St. James church, Dudley, Memorials.
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Town Hall, Priory Street, Dudley
