Two Chatteris boys, killed the same day, June 15th, 1918

At 11 a.m. , on June 15th 2018, at Chatteris War Memorial, Cambs, two local men will be/ were remembered, on the exact centenary of their deaths on the Western Front. They were both killed by shell fire. They were not in the same unit or location - their graves are more than 260 km apart - and yet I have 'one degree of separation' connections to both of them. This blog, and an associated post on Facebook on the exact anniversary, remembers them, in recognition of what seems to me a strange coincidence, and on behalf of my late grandfather and grandmother, who are my respective links to them. One, Cyril Lovell, was (as told to me in boyhood) 'Grandpa's best friend'; and the other, Fred Squires, was Grandma's cousin (she was christened Dora Squires Kemp). I don't know whether there was any connection between the two men in life. From my own memories of growing up in Chatteris, fifty years later, I would guess that they probably 'knew of' each other. They might well both have attended the (then new) King Edward School at the same time. But beyond that, they probably moved in very different circles in the town. My grandfather, Alg(ernon) Kirton Graham, also served on the Western Front, in the RFC and then the RAF. He came home safe, and here am I, a hundred years on, and all but fifty years older than either Cyril or Fred ever was, to remember. Grandma's mother and Fred's father were brother and sister. Grandma was the youngest of her family, and about six years older than Fred - it is tempting to surmise that she might sometimes have 'kept an eye on' him in his boyhood. What I do know, and remember very clearly, is that around 1960, she and Grandpa took their summer holiday in Eastbourne, and when they came, she spoke, in that sadly portentous way women of her generation had, of looking across the Channel towards France, and thinking of 'all those who went over there, and never came back'. The Squires were, obviously, 'a generation further back' to us growing up in Chatteris in the 50's and 60's. But the link is there in the genes. My sister Lesley is now a living reminder of Grandma and her sister Emily, and we know from family history and old photos that that particular 'face' is actually a Squires look. The links to Cyril Lovell also go wide and long. My sister Lesley and I had a classic rocking horse handed down to us in the 1950's, from our cousins-once-removed Richard and Alison Graham, and my memory is that it originally came from the Lovells. Much later, of course, Lovell and Ward took over Graham and Fisher's premises at 36 High Street, as acquired and set up by my great-grandfather Tom Graham, home, and later workplace, to Alg and his brother Spencer (father of Richard and Alison). My father Douglas, and later my mother, and Richard, all worked there. And Mum, Dad and I lived in rooms there briefly in 1947 - 50. (Those who actually remember the original Lovell and Ward's store, which occupied the triangular plot where Railway Lane runs into High Street -now a paved public space - must all be pensioners, I think.)