Page 64 - Bugle Issue 18 Auntumn 2021

LONDON
Royal Green Jackets veteran single-hand- edly restores over 130 graves of ‘forgotten’ fallen soldiers including those of 21 VC holders buried in church yards in SE England.
Steve Davies (63) from Hawkhurst, in Kent and formerly of 3 RGJ, has been restoring the graves of fallen soldiers for nearly four years. He first started restoration after finding an overgrown grave of a First World War Rifle Brigade veteran aged 18-year-old.
Steve commented; “I was attending a family christening in Sandhurst, Kent and wandered outside. There was a dirty overgrown war grave of an 18-year-old Rifleman in the Rifle Brigade – my antecedent regiment – who died six weeks before the Armistice.’ I came back the next day and sorted it out. The rest
is history. I have now restored graves as far as East Sussex, around Greater London and in Kent. I have been to about 25 different sites anywhere up to an hour’s drive from home.”
The graves Steve has restored fall outside the remit of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which look after the graves of those fallen on the Battlefields in both World Wars.
Using a combination of water and profes- sional cleaning fluids Steve gently removes decades of pollution that has weathered the headstones and in some cases he has been forced to remodel parts of the grave which have broken off. He was helped with the remodelling by a fellow Rifleman (Ex-WO2 Terry Mason) from his former battalion.
The restorations, which are painstakingly completed over numerous visits, have cost him hundreds of pounds each in some cases.
Project Nova, a charity, has provided him
with five gallons of D2 Nio-Biological cleaner and the Dutch company HG International
B.V., supplied nearly 100 bottles of headstone cleaner, otherwise Steve has funded the entire project himself.
64 RIFLES The Bugle
I have now restored graves as far as East Sussex, around Greater London and in Kent.
I have been to about 25 different sites
Anyone interested in Steve’s work should go to his Facebook Group: Military Grave Restorer
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