Tuesday 31 October 2023

Revealing more on the story of Private Jordan .............. from Cheltenham to Cairo

This is one of those sad postscripts, but one that holds the promise of discovering more about a soldier of the Great War.

Cairo War Memorial Cemetery
Yesterday I wrote about Private H F Jordan who spent time recovering from his wounds in the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.*

During his time there he left a message in the autograph book which had been started by Ms Rachel Wattis.

But apart from a record of the medals he was awarded and an entry in the UK Army Register of Soldier’s Effects I could find nothing more about him.

Today I heard from David Harrop who owns the autograph book.  He had also gone looking for Private Jordan and found his grave in Cairo where he was buried in February 1919.

“This cemetery is within the Old Cairo cemetery area, which is situated approximately 5 kilometres south east of the centre of Cairo. 

The cemetery area is on the south side of the road Salah Salem, which runs west/east from the River Nile towards the green park area approximately 2 kilometres beyond and eventually towards the Citadel.”**

And Private Jordan rests close to the Records Office.

The message from Private Jordan, December 1916
We still have no idea how he died but we now have his full name and his date of birth and armed with these it should be possible to find out a little bit more about Frederick Thomas Harry Jordan who died aged 26 in Egypt four months after the end of the Great War.

And in doing so take the story of that message in the autograph book just a little further forward.

Picture; Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/11000/CAIRO%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY and Private Jordan's message from Blighty, the autograph book of St John's Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham from the collection of David Harrop

Image from the autograph book, © David Harrop


*Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 2 looking for Private H F Jordan, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/blighty-unique-record-from-great-war.html

**CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY, Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/11000/CAIRO%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY

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