Lest we forget

I daresay there are Commonwealth War Graves in churchyards and cemeteries all around the country, but I had never seen one before coming across this stone. This morning I checked online records and discovered that Charles Hubert Coley was born in 1893 in Quinton, Gloucestershire; having been an agricultural labourer, he joined the army in 1913. After serving in France from 1914-15 he was posted to Salonika, where he was taken ill with malaria in the summer of 1916 and evacuated to England, remaining in hospital until early 1917. By late 1917 he was back in France, where he stayed until his final return to England and demobilisation in January 1919. Unmarried, and with his father dead and his mother in an asylum, he went to stay with the family of his eldest brother Thomas in North Littleton, and died there of malaria and lobar pneumonia on 7th February. On the 100th anniversary of Great Britain's entry into World War One I think with respect of the hard life and early death of this young man - just one story out of millions.