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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.
Sidney Parry was born in Quarry Bank and enlisted in the Worcesters. He was sent to the 4th Battalion who returned from Gallipoli in early 1916 and were in the second wave at Beaumont-Hamel on the first day of the Somme. They returned for a second tour of duty in October and helped to gain the long fought for Transloy Ridges. In the Spring of 1917 they were in the front line in the battles of Arras. On the 14th April a strong attack was made on the fortified village of Monchy-le-Preux, just east of Arras, with considerable loss. On the 23rd another attack was made but the German defences on the Hindenburg Line were impossible to overcome. Private Sidney Parry was killed in action on this day alongside two other Cradley men. He is commemorated on the Arras and Cradley Memorials.
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Town Hall, Priory Street, Dudley
