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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.
Albert Smith was born in Halesowen but was living in Bargoed, south Wales, in 1914. He enlisted in the Welsh Regiment and was sent to the 1/5th Territorial Battalion. They were sent to Gallipoli and landed in August 1915 at Suvla Bay. They suffered heavily and were sent to Egypt in December 1915 and then to Greece for the Salonika campaign. While in transit to Salonika the transport ship, Transylvania, was torpedoed near Genoa by a German submarine on the 4th May 1917 and over 400 lives were lost. Most of the bodies were taken to Savona, the nearest harbour. They included Private Albert Smith who is commemorated on the Savona and Halesowen Memorials.
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ST JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH, High St, Halesowen, Dudley, West Midlands, England, B63 3BB
