By Alex Mettler
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, an Armistice was signed at Compiegne, France, dictating cessation of hostilities between the Allies and Germany and the end of the worldwide hostilities of the ‘War to End All Wars’. The Armistice came into force at 11am on that historic day to end a war which had killed some 18 million people, military and civilian, and wounded some 23 million more. Three years later, on the 22nd May 1921, Tavistock unveiled and dedicated a granite war memorial in Guildhall Square commemorating, on that special day, 111 of Tavistock’s sons who fell in that terrible conflict. By the date of closure for names, November 1923, a further 8 names had been added, and, in 2005, a further name, that of Frederick Dashper. The first Tavistock related death during the war was that of Hugh Mockler-Ferryman of the Second Battalion of the Oxford and Bucks, killed by shell fire on the 16th September 1914 at the first battle of the Aisne and buried in the nearby churchyard at La Soupir; the last that of Frederick Hicks of the Royal Army Service Corps who died in Salisbury after being invalided home from the Western Front. Frederick is buried in the Plymouth Road Cemetery.
Following the Remembrance Day Parade on Sunday 11th November the Tavistock Branch of the British Legion will invite members of the public to a small reception in the Town Hall and this will be followed at c12.30 by a talk by Tavistock Heritage Trust trustee, Alex Mettler, on the men of Tavistock who died in the First World War and whose names are inscribed on the Tavistock War Memorial. The talk is sponsored by the Tavistock Heritage Trust, the Tavistock Branch of the British Legion and Tavistock Town Council; the reception and talk will be free to all.