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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.
Benjamin Unitt came from Cradley and attended Cradley C of E School. He volunteered in August 1914 for the South Staffordshire Regiment and joined the 9th (Service) Battalion which became the Pioneer battalion of the 23rd Division. It was engaged in small parties repairing roads, making defences and assisting the other battalions in the Division. In the Flanders mud of September and October 1917 its tasks were enormous. The Staffords were engaged weeks of intense fighting half way through Third Ypres in the battle of the Menin Road from the 21st September and again from the 10th October. Losses were high and included Private Benjamin Unitt who is buried in the Menin Road South Cemetery (II M 21) and commemorated on the Cradley, Halesowen and Cradley C of E School Memorials.
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ST JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH, High St, Halesowen, Dudley, West Midlands, England, B63 3BB
