Edward Hart, 18, had been too young to be called up for the first world war, but lied about his age to join up after being sent a white feather, the symbol of cowardice. Within two years he was dead. “He was a good-looking, strapping lad and people couldn’t believe he wasn’t old enough,” says his nephew, Denis Taylor, 86, who is in Ypres for the commemorations. “So someone, we don’t know who sent him that feather. It was quite common then. After basic training he was straight away off to Ypres.”
Hart swiftly moved through the ranks, not least due to the severe casualties in his battalion. “He was a corporal within two years,” says Taylor. “From what we know, he was killed by a shell burst and then buried behind the trenches. It was 3 August 1917. His remains were never found.”
Taylor was brought up on the stories of the deaths of Edward, in Passchendaele, and his elder brother, Frederick, 21, in the Somme. “But my mum never came here,” he says. “In the 1920s and 30s, people didn’t have the money to come to France. It was Southend in the charabanc for holidays. We didn’t have the money. But before she died she made me promise I’d make it here. And I did.”
In 1997, Taylor, with a close family group, including his daughter, Jill, and her son, Julien, then 10, visited the Menin gate, the memorial in Ypres to the missing, and found Edward’s name. “I did some research. It was quite simple. Just gave the war graves commission his number and they did the rest,” he says. “I married a Frenchman, so he was able to help when we were over here,” says Jill, 58, “but we couldn’t see him initially on the arch. Then we walked up the stairs at the gate and saw many more names. It was amazing to see all those names.”
The family, along with 200 other descendants of men who fell at Ypres but whose remains were never found, joined the commemorations on Sunday evening at Menin gate, along with Prince William and Theresa May. Jill says: “It’s good that this is happening, it’s important and it’s our family’s story. I’m a bit of a softie on family. I’m wearing my grandmother’s wedding ring today. It feels like we’ve given him the send-off he deserves now.”
