Ernest Campbell, killed in World War I

Ernest Campbell, an accountant's clerk, married Florence Norcop, a tailoress, in Bethesda Chapel on 4 April 1915. We've been touched and grateful to receive details and memorabilia about Ernest from Mrs Marion Gilbert, whose friend Lizzie Rushton (née Haddon) was Florence Campbell's niece. Mrs Rushton died in 2001 at the age of 89, and Marion found the items described here among her effects.

During World War I, Ernest was a private in the 2nd Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. Sadly, he was killed in action in northern France on 1 October 1918 – one of 35 fatalities listed in a Bethesda Roll of Honour printed for a social evening on 24 October that year. It must have been bitterly hard for Florence to read parts of Rev. F.J Wharton's preface sending greetings to 'Our Boys':

The end is rapidly drawing near, and, as I write, we have thrilling news of Victories on every Front. Maybe, before you receive this, the fruits of those Victories will have begun to be reaped. Let us hope so. There is a fervent expectation on the part of all that this is the last greeting we shall need to send you, because by next Xmas you will be with us.

Along with a formal letter announcing her husband's death (shown on the right), Florence received a handwritten letter from a civil servant at the Ministry of Pensions in London, saying:

Madam,

The Minister of Pensions has heard with regret of the death of your husband in the war and I am directed to offer his sincere sympathy with you in your loss.

To assist you in meeting any extra expenses that may fall on you in consequence of your bereavement the sum of £5 will be paid to you at the Post Office on presentation of the enclosed Identity Certificate.

The question of your pension will be settled in due course.

To add to Florence's reading burden, or perhaps giving some consolation, she received a short printed letter from King George V (also shown on the right). It makes mention of an enclosure, 'this memorial of a brave life'. We don't know what this was, but it may have been Ernest's war medals and identity disk, which Florence kept for the rest of her life.

At some later stage, an In Memoriam notice appeared at Bethesda to mark the passing of Private Campbell. There must have been many such notices, relentlessly appearing one by one as the war progressed. Perhaps the Chapel produced them for its members, or perhaps individual families arranged for such things -- do let us know if you have more information about how such deaths were marked by the Bethesda congregation.

There is one final document, an affecting mixture of the formal and the personal. It's a printed 'love token' for 'Our Boys', with 'Private E. Campbell' written in by hand. (The address at the bottom was added many years later.) Can you cast any light on 'tokens' like this one? Do you have something similar in your family collection?

Ernest is buried at Masnieres British Military Cemetery, Marcoing, near Cambrai in northern France; his grave is pictured here.

Florence never remarried.