If so read on…..
My readers of longer standing will recall that on Sunday 11th November 2007 a party of 9 Cobbolds joined the national parade in Whitehall to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph commemorating the 48 Cobbolds who died in two World Wars.
Of the 35 Cobbolds who died in WWI (Link to ‘King and Country’) the majority fell on the Somme. The Imperial (as it was then) War Graves Commission erected the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, Belgium, “in honour of the British Armies who stood at Ypres from 1914 to 1918, and of 56,000 of those of their dead who fell in the salient and who have no known grave”.
Every evening at exactly 8.0’clock, the police halt the traffic passing through the Menin Gate to allow buglers to play their simple but moving tribute to the memory of those who fought and died. On Armistice Day each year there is a much larger ceremony including a veterans’ parade.
I am booked to attend the event this year on November 11th and I have applied to the authorities to lay a wreath which will commemorate the 35 Cobbolds and in addition I propose to include the following members of our extended family:
Lt. Noel Roland Abbey, 4th Bn. Grenadier Guards who died 12th April 1918 aged 20
Capt. Geoffrey Foster Griffith, London Regt. (Queen Victoria’s Rifles) who died 26th September 1917 aged 26
Capt. Geoffrey Percy Robert Toynbee, The Rifle Brigade who died 15th November 1914 aged 29.
Requests for other family members to be included (preferably containing the above information) should reach me by mid-October please.
I have an additional reason for attendance. The Menin Gate Memorial was unveiled and dedicated on Sunday 24th of July, 1927 by Field-Marshal Lord Plumer who is my first cousin, albeit twice removed. The Trust has the Order of Service used on that occasion by the Field-Marshal.
Anthony Cobbold
September 2013
