talk report - july 2007
25 July: Progress Report on the War Memorials Project - Richard Houghton
Mr Houghton, in his very informative talk, pointed out that not all those who were killed during the two World Wars appear on War Memorials. Some are not on memorials because their family thought that they might still return, or because they did not die immediately of wounds but later after they had returned home, or because they disappeared and it is not known how they died. During the Second World War Hitler gave orders that those monuments to the German dead from the First World War should be preserved and protected from damage. Memorials to those killed in wars before the First World War are scarce unless concerning a particular campaign e.g. The Crimean War or the Boer War. It was not until after the First World War that George V decreed that no man who died in the Great War should be forgotten.
Mr Houghton pointed out that Burscough had two War Memorials, the Cross of Sacrifice and the War Memorial window in St John's C. of E., where he had managed to identify the combatants represented by the unforms that appear. Mr Houghton then showed us the dossiers he had compiled on men killed during WW1 for which his main concern is to find out as much as he can about those that do appear on the memorials and to have the names added of those not included when he has traced who has died.