Charles Normandale and Walter George David Hughes

The re-imagined story …

I never knew my two cousins Charles and Walter Hughes. I was born nearly twenty years after they both died in the Great War. In our family it felt as if the war never really ended. My gran lost four grandsons, boys she had helped to raise. Families were close in those days.

After the war, how did the families carry on?  How did they pick up their lives with an empty place at the table and unslept beds in the back bedroom?  A best suit hanging in the wardrobe; boots in the passage way.  Family photographs where a pictured son, sometimes two, are forever missing.  How did siblings feel, growing up, growing old, living years of which a brother was robbed?

Gran kept photographs of her boys on the mantelpiece for the rest of her life. I often wonder what happened to them after she died. No doubt one of my aunties took them. One thing I can guarantee, they will still be in one of the family homes, their names remembered once in awhile.

The facts ….

One Rodbourne family lost two sons in the First World War.  Albert and Minnie Hughes lived all their married life in the streets alongside the railway factory, raising four sons and a daughter.

Their third son, Charles Normandale Hughes, was a driver with the Royal Field Artillery.  He died on December 3, 1918 in Manchester.  He was 19 years old.  His war records are lost.  His grave in plot D192 in Radnor Street Cemetery is marked by an official Commonwealth War Graves headstone.

Charles is buried with his parents and another family member E.  Hughes, most probably a cousin.  In 1995 the cremated remains of his sister Muriel May were interred in the grave.  Muriel was just four years old when war broke out and claimed her elder brothers.  She was 84 years old at the time of her death.

Albert and Minnie’s eldest son Walter George David Hughes joined the 97th Field Company Royal Engineers and was killed in action on June 26, 1916.  He was 23 years old.  He is buried in the Ville Sur Ancre Communal Cemetery.

Charles and Walter’s names appear on the Roll of Honour, now on display in the Civic Offices in Euclid Street. For nearly 100 years it hung in the old Town Hall and for many of those it remained hidden behind curtains after the building became used as a dance studio.

Charles received an official Commonwealth War Graves headstone and the Hughes family remembered their other lost son Walter on their own grave in Radnor Street Cemetery. Sadly, until recently the kerbstone memorial had lay discarded in nearby bushes. Radnor Street Cemetery war graves volunteers Jon, Dave and Brian have recently reunited the kerbstone with the family grave.

Join us today at 2 pm for a Service of Remembrance at the Cross of Sacrifice in Radnor Street Cemetery. During the service a plaque will be unveiled dedicated to Mark Sutton. 

Originally published on October 17, 2019.