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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.
Edward Parkes was born in Blackheath but in 1914 he was living at New Tredegar, South Wales. He enlisted in the Staffords and went to the 2nd Battalion which was closely involved in the 1916 Battle of the Somme and in the 1917 Battles of Ypres and Cambrai. In early 1918 the Staffords remained in the front line, facing the Hindenburg Line near Cambrai and expecting the first of the German Spring offensives. Trench warfare was particularly difficult in February with regular and very heavy shelling and it is probable that this was responsible for serious injuries to Private Edward Parkes. He died of wounds on the 28th February and is buried in Ruyaulcourt Cemetery (J 3) near Havrincourt Wood and commemorated on the Blackheath and Halesowen Memorials.
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ST JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH, High St, Halesowen, Dudley, West Midlands, England, B63 3BB
