Telford graveside ceremony honours Great War medic
A graveside ceremony was being held today in Telford to honour a local soldier of the Great War who died 100 years ago.
The ceremony at 1pm at Wombridge church is the latest in a series of such war grave commemorations organised by the Oakengates and District branch of the Royal British Legion.
It aims to honour the locally-buried soldiers of the Great War generation on, or as close as possible to, the centenary of their deaths.
The ceremonies are typically attended by RBL standard bearers and any surviving relatives that can be traced, and comprise a short service followed by the Last Post.
Today the legion was remembering Private Charles William Meeson of the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was the son of William and Mary Meeson, of Stafford Road, Oakengates.
"This will be the 18th of the 22 commemorations," said branch secretary Mrs Moira Wallace, who has researched his background.
"All I have been able to find is that he enlisted on December 12, 1915, in Wellington aged 18 into The Labour Corps, transferring to the RAMC in 1917.
"He was admitted to Purfleet Military Hospital in Essex suffering with pneumonia where he died on August 23, 1919. He was buried in Wombridge churchyard following a military funeral."
The legion's project began in 2015 and is running for six years, including local men who died after the Armistice in 1918 but whose deaths are recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission up to 1921.
