Three men of the Great War buried in Southern Cemetery a long way from home

Now I know there is more of a story here but some of it eludes me.

This is the memorial in Southern Cemetery to three men killed fighting in the Great War and for two of them I will be hard pushed to learn much about their lives because both were from New Zealand.

Alleyne G Webber was killed in action at Bauchops Hill in Gallipoli in August 6th 1915 and is “buried where he fell.”

His brother, Gerard died the following February here in Manchester “of wounds received in action before France on November 14th 1916."

Both men were 27 years old and they were from New Zealand.

Alleyne Webber was a Lance Corporal in the Otago Mounted Rifles which had been formed at the outbreak of the war and left New Zealand in the October for Egypt.

He died on the second day of an operation to capture Chunuk Bair a high point in the Sari Bair mountain range.

His brother who served in the 10th Royal Fusiliers had been wounded on the second day of what was to be the final large British attack during the Battle of the Somme.

I cannot even now begin to comprehend how his parents Emily and Alfred came to terms with the loss of two sons or that both were buried so far from home.

And I wonder also at how Mrs Ross took the news of her son Alan who had died in the July of 1916 just fourteen days after the start of the Battle of the Somme.

He too is on the memorial remembered with the lines “in memory of a splendid Friend and Comrade Alan Hamiliton Ross, 10th Royal Fusiliers Killed in action in France, July 15th, 1916.”

Now in the way these things work it will be far more difficult to uncover the lives of Alleyne and Gerard Webber, but at least I know something of Private Ross.

He was 30 years old was born in Paddington and came from a wealthy family.

His father was a ship owner and Private Ross attended Dover College founded in 1870.

There is something very moving in seeing these three men recorded together in Southern Cemetery but sadly the monument has recorded the year of Lance Corporal Webber’s death wrongly citing 1916 for 1915.

It is a small error and with the passage of a century does nothing to detract from the memorial.

I have to thank David Harrop for taking the photograph and once again point me to his permanent exhibition of memorabilia from the Great War which is housed in the Remembrance Lodge at Southern Cemetery.

Picture; from the memorial to Lance Corporal Webber and Private Weber and Ross, Southern Cemetery, 2015, courtesy of David Harrop