Dr Megan Wang (née Kelleher)

Recently, I have been working abroad on an internship where I have been able to be up close and personal with both the heritage sector and some of the most beautiful sites, in my opinion. The Ypres Salient has a particular prominence for me beyond its historical and aesthetic purpose in that it is the final resting place of at least three of my relatives. In a classic family history style, I only really began to hear about these individuals when I stated that I was going to Belgium for the first time in 2014 and their stories were at best limited. So, when I came over to Belgium in April 2018 I felt it was only fitting for me to start to uncover their secrets!

The first relative I chose to look at was my Great-Great Grandfather, Charles Bonnard. He had been a Private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment but had sadly lost his life in May 1915, just two months before my Great Grandmother was born. It was an incredibly sad tale that had stuck with me since I had first heard it as I felt it was one of many similar stories that had touched countless families and so to find information about Charles would be fitting. I found that he had been born in 1891 and had married my Great Grandmother in 1913. However, he led me to another interesting individual…

The beautiful footpath I walked up to see Charles Bonnard at La Plus Douve Farm Cemetery, Hainaut.

Within the first few weeks of being in Belgium, there had been a reburial for a number of soldiers at New Irish Farm Cemetery, including for Captain Henry John Innes Walker of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. I was sent a picture by my Mum discussing how he and his comrades had been found, along with the message ‘is this the Innes?’ so I decided to do some research into him.

To contextualise, the daughter of Charles Bonnard had the middle name Innes and when we once asked her how it had been chosen she had mentioned that it was related to her late father’s Commanding Officer, as was common at the time. To find an individual who served in the same Regiment as my Great-Great Grandfather, it seems to be a likely match! Captain Walker’s story was incredibly interesting in that, although he had served with the British Army, he was a New Zealand native who had also played rugby for one of my local clubs in the UK. On 25^th April 1915, he is killed in action and it appears that his remains were untouched until 2016 when he was found as part of a dig. For me, it seemed almost like fate that he had been rededicated when I was living not too far from his final resting place and telling the stories of individuals like him!

Captain Henry John Innes Walker (photograph from the New Zealand War Graves Project)

As you can imagine, I have a lot of research still to do on these individuals as well as my other relatives, but to say I am excited to uncover their stories is an understatement!