In Remembrance of Private W.T. Cooper.

 

Meteren Military Cemetery 

I know of two men who refused to be conscripted in WWII. They were told they would have to go before a tribunal who would decide if they had grounds for conscientious objection. They both refused on the grounds that the only judge of their conscience was themselves and no one else. I think they went to prison.

I've never been a soldier but I believe soldiers don't really fight for king and country. What they fight for is to keep themselves alive and their mates alive. Why do you think Lord Kitchener set up “Pals Battalions?” The idea was to aid recruitment and it was thought by the military top brass, that men who knew one another, would support each other. After major battles whole streets in Britain could lose their menfolk.

I remember reading about my great grandfather's brother, who died in France. A married man from Stalybridge, with several children, he'd served 12 years in the British army and then went on the reserve list. He was called up in August 1914, served in the Warwickshire Regiment, and was dead by October 1914. Private W.T. Cooper, was buried in Meteren Military Cemetery in Belgium.  His name is inscribed on the cenotaph on Trinity Street in Stalybridge. His youngest daughter, Hilda, never knew her father, but before every Remembrance Sunday, she always pinned a posy of flowers next to his name on the cenotaph. Private Cooper's death was reported in the Ashton Reporter under the heading "Pathetic Coincidence", because he died on the same day as another man from Stalybridge, who also got killed in France. When I first saw a photograph of him in the Ashton Reporter, I actually thought it was my grandfather, because he was the spitting image of him. I remember thinking to myself, what's my grandad doing wearing an Edwardian frock coat with a nosegay in his lapel.  My great grandfather was more fortunate, because he lost an arm and was sent back to Blighty.

I doubt that many British soldiers in WWI, really knew what they were fighting for. Some may have thought that they were fighting to protect their families and loved ones from a hostile enemy, but an invasion of Britain, was never really part of Germany's war aims. The Germans did bomb and shell parts of Britain, but most of that war was fought in France. At the end of the war, Britain and France, carved up between themselves what was left of the Ottoman Empire, and Britain bombed the Arabs and seized the oil wells of Mesopotamia. That war was an imperialist war, a war between ruling classes.