Members of Fairfield (Dartford) Women’s Institute were taken back to the days of the First World War, by Sue and John Pearce, with their talk “Flowers for Emma”.

Sue told us that her Grandmother Emma had been engaged to a young unnamed soldier who had been killed during the war.

This sad event had become a secret until she told Sue many years later.

A promise to lay flowers on his grave took John and Sue thirty years to achieve.

John then took up the tale; a chance find of two war medals solved the puzzle of his name Corporal Harry William Godwin.

John then researched the National Archives at Kew and the Ministry of Defence records and found that he had been killed at the battle of Loos in 1915.

More importantly his medals had been sent to Emma as his named next of kin.

Nobody in Emma’s family knew about him, Sue said and Emma had met and married a former soldier while serving in a munitions factory later in the war.

John had illustrated their talk with slides concerning the events leading up to the war, conditions during the war and Emma’s story.

John found on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website the details of the cemetery where Harry is named on the memorial, as he had no known grave.

At last Sue and John could keep the promise to visit the cemetery and law flowers on behalf of Emma, to her lost but not forgotten fiance.

Sue was very emotional at this ceremony as she had been able to keep her promise to her grandmother who had died a few years ago.

This poignant tale reminds us of many women like Emma who had been orphaned early in life, lost a fiance in the war and married a soldier who had been gassed. She went on to have children and grandchildren but never forgot her first love.

Fairfield (Dartford) WI meet on the second Tuesday of the month at Dartford Grammer School for Girls, Shepherds Lane at 7.30pm.