Military Monday: British War Dead on Your Street

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has just  completed War Graves Week to  “shine a light on our work.” Website visitors were invited to “discover your local connection” using a postcode link to “find out who lived in your area.”

While it does not work for Canadian postal codes you might want to check it out for UK addresses in your family’s past. Who from your ancestor’s neighbourhood lost their life? Was it someone they knew or from a family they knew? Can it give any insight into your ancestor’s wartime experience?

To find the present postcode, they didn’t exist until trialled in 1959, use the Royal Mail postcode finder.

Using my grandfather’s address in Edgeware the person found in the CWGC postcode search was Betty Mary Daphne Perrin, a civilian who died on 5 October 1944, age 17 years. She was the daughter of Henry and Evelyn Perrin and died at 5 Pembroke Place. That was 150 metres from my grandfather’s house.  There were two other casualties buried in the same cemetery who died on that day who lived even closer!

A brief description of a bomb experience just 500m from my grandfather’s home, it could have been the same raid, is at http://bombsight.org/explore/greater-london/barnet/edgware/ starting at the 7th paragraph. I can now appreciate his wartime experience a bit more.