Annie:
It has been very satisfying to see the help that you and the group at RootsChat have given to Michel. He is dedicated to finding the relatives, if they exist, of Lt. Stead and returning the ID bracelet medallion. I know something of his passion for this quest. His dream was to reunite the tag with the family.
One needs only a brief visit to Flanders to get a strong measure of the sacrifice buried in those fields. The reason for my journey there in December of 2005 was to find the grave of my great uncle and accompany my father to same. I did not realize as I set out on that journey that my father and I would not only find and honor the grave of William Henry Jeffcott, but we would cross the bridge of friendship with Michel.
Michel, as the town administrator and the only English speaker in the city offices of Fleurbaix, greeted my father and me as friends and helped us find information about the situation of our relative in the days before his all-too-young end in 1915.
We believe my great uncle was the last of the Jeffcott line.
On her deathbed in 1999 at age 100, my grandmother Henrietta (Jeffcott) Murray, expressed her greatest regret in life as the inability of anyone from our family to find and visit the final resting place of her dear brother, Willy. All that she had to go on for over 80 years were some last letters from the front and a wartime postal card from an officer describing the general locale of his burial site. But, of course, the details of our search and the mysteries that remain are not the subject of this effort.
Michel shared with us the metal tag which he had found years before. My dad, a former Royal Navy Frogman (WWII) and an immigrant to America in 1947, helped with some deciphering of the inscription (C of E for Church of England and NOT Corps of Engineers) and I offered the suggestion that the tag was lost by a survivor of the conflict. Happily, in so much as our concern for Lt. Stead, this was found to be true as his service record proves. Experts from the Great War Forum were of much assistance in this determination. But, until now, Michel has been unable to add much to his search for survivors of the veteran, Lt. Stead.
So, to answer your question directly, I am very much impressed with the information you and the team are finding. But I am much more heartened by the giving spirit and the demonstration of love for humanity by your group of 21st century researchers in England on behalf of a good man in France seeking peaceful reconciliation with the survivors of a soldier who spent the early years of his manhood fighting a war in that Frenchman’s backyard nearly a century ago.
And as the father of Lt. Andrew David Murray, US Army Corps of Engineers, and as one who stands for peace in this increasingly violent world, I say, what a beautiful world it is! It is more beautiful today because of all of you!
Thank you!
Andrew D. Murray Sr.
www.williamhjeffcott.blogspot.comModerator comment: email address removed in accordance with Rootschat policy. Please use the PM system to exchange personal details