A World War One Soldier's Story

Some of you may remember in one of my earlier blogs I spoke of one of my favourite Thames mudlarking finds which is a brass luggage tag engraved with “F. Jury, 72 Woolwich Rd, SE10”. This tag led me to discover the life of a man called Frederick Jury who was born in 1873 and who at the age of 43 travelled to Australia from London to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force to fight in the First World War.

We don’t know why he joined the AIF. Perhaps it was because he was too old to join the British Army. For whatever reason though, Fred Jury did join the AIF and he went to France where he fought in the trenches and suffered extensive injuries.

Whilst he was fighting in France, his wife Sarah Amelia “Millie” was at home in Woolwich running a coffee shop. Fred and Millie had met before the war when Fred moved into 72 Woolwich Road as her lodger. They later fell in love and married. It must have been a worrying time for Millie, as it was for thousands of other wives and girlfriends left at home during the war. Luckily Fred survived the war despite his injuries and he was discharged in 1919, receiving the silver war badge for his services.

He died in 1932 at the young age of 59. I was fortunate enough to find out where Fred was buried, which is in the paupers’ section of a graveyard not far from where I live, and now each year I visit him to lay some flowers on Remembrance Sunday.

What I didn’t mention in my previous blog about Fred was that I knew that Millie was also buried in the same graveyard. However, I could not find her. I mentioned this to Dave, one of the cemetery keepers who kindly keeps Fred’s grave free of brambles all year long. A few months later, I received an email from Dave who said that they had located Millie’s grave and that there was no stone and no markings whatsoever. He invited me to come to see it. I met up with Dave and he took me to Millie Jury’s grave and to my delight and surprise he had made a wooden cross with a brass plaque engraved “Sarah Jury, died 14th March 1936”.

It was so special to find Millie, particularly as I always had a sense that Fred wanted to know where she was. This Remembrance Sunday whilst visiting Fred to lay some flowers, I kept one of them to place on her grave, telling her it was from Fred. Mudlarks find many reminders of war in the River Thames. This one is the most poignant for me and each time I visit Fred, I think of the countless others who lost their lives and who never returned home. And of course we think too of those who are losing their lives now in conflicts around the world. Thank you too to Dave for these gestures of kindness. It is thanks to him that Fred and Millie have found each other again.

(If you would like to see the graves, check out my pinned post on Instagram @tidelineart)

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