Page 258 - The Bugle 2018

Pte Thomas Telford Edmundson TDLI KIA 26 Apil 1915 finally receives a full military funeral l4 March 2018
Discovery, identification and burial of
Durham Light Infantry soldiers from WWI
(submitted by C Bowery, Durham Branch D.L.I. Association)
Reverend John Swanson 1 Rifles conducts the funeral service
Sjt Gareth Forrest 3 Rifles is i/c the Bearer Party
According to figures from The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) approximately 300,000 British soldiers killed in World War One (WWI) are not buried in any CWGC cemetery. With building of new houses, roads and industrial units on the battlefields, more and more soldiers’ remains are being uncovered where they fell.
Some 2/3 years ago, two sets of such remains were found. One in the town of Zonnebeke -near Ypres in Belgium, the other near Gravelle -near Arras in France. The task of trying to positively identify the remains and re-burial passed to CWGC and Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC), who go to great lengths with identification but this obviously entirely depends upon what features are found with the remains. After being in the ground for almost a hundred years, this is often very sparse.
In the case of the remains found in Zonnebeke (near the old railway station), a Durham Light Infantry (D.L.I.) shoulder title along with buttons, fragments of clothing, belt hooks and Lee Enfield bullets were found. Thus indicating the remains as someone who had served in the D.L.I.
The Durham County Records Department were then consulted to see if they could identify any D.L.I. Battalions who had been in the area during WWI. By consulting war diaries it was verified that only two Battalions, the 7th and 8th had been in Zonnebeke during the war. In the case of the 8th they had only marched through the town on 24th April 1915 and had reported no casualties -thus identifying
the unknown as having served in the 7th. Further research revealed that the 7th only spent one day (26th April) in the town during the Second Battle of Ypres.
The 7th were a territorial Battalion based in Sunderland and had only arrived in France as part of the 50th Northumbrian Division on 19th April 1915. Further investigation of the local newspaper, reveals on the 26th, the Battalion suffered almost continuous artillery bombardment by the Germans and this resulted in the loss of seven killed. None of the bodies were able to be recovered due to the haste of the withdrawal and were therefore left on the battlefield. Therefore it was a reasonable assumption that the discovered remains must be one of these seven soldiers.
A professional genealogist then entered the picture to try and trace any living relatives of the seven men. Eventually DNA samples were taken and compared to those from the remains and a positive match was obtained. The remains being identified as Private, 2648, Thomas Telford Edmundson, son of George and Mary Edmundson of 15 Abingdon St. Chester Road, Sunderland. Thomas was born on 24th September 1894 and after school became a clerk in an electrical engineering firm, enlisting in September 1914 soon after the outbreak of war. As indicated he was one of the battalion’s first casualties in the war.
The archaeologist who excavated the remains indicated that the body had been placed in a grave, so presumably buried by the Germans after
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