In Mousehole ….. remembering those who never came home

 When the sums were finally done the cost of the Great War was horrendous.

In Mousehole, 2025

They included 887,858 military deaths, 16,829 civilian deaths, a huge number of wounded from the battlefields, which amounted to between 1.9% and 2.22% of the total population.

Figures which will have had their own powerful and personal impact on families and communities.

No where more so than in the tiny villages and hamlets across the country.  Statisticians might argue that the loss was no greater than in the great cities and towns, but in the small communities of rural Britain it might have felt so.

And I was struck by that thought last week as we explored the fishing villages along the eastern coast of Cornwall.

From Mousehole where we stayed through Newlyn and Penzance and inland through small villages and hamlets all of which each had their own monument to those who fought and those who never came back.

Of course, statistics often gloss over the detail, so while the loss was great, it was not so everywhere.  

Six members of our family went to war, including my great grandfather who returned to the colours, my grandfather, his two brothers and my uncles George and Fergus, and all returned.  As well as my two German great uncles which underlines that simple observation that for my family the conflict was a civil war as well as a clash of nations.

But in Mousehole using the 1901 census because the data is more accessible than either 1911 or 1921 and projecting forward to 1914-1918 the 36 who died during the war amounted to roughly 12% of the male population who might have been eligible for military service.

Sharing the view with the war memorial, 2025

It's a calculation fraught with the potential for mistakes, but there were 206 males out of a total population of 969 who during the Great War might have volunteered or been called up.

And yes the figures and calculations do need revisiting. 

Nor is  that all because my old friend Lois reminded me "You know, of course, of the 'thankful' villages, where no men were lost during the war, and the "double thankful" places where every man who served returned home from both World Wars. 

I always think there must have been some feelings of guilt for those who returned , that they did come home, but many of them would have been grievously wounded - in body and mind".

Location; Mousehole, Cornwall

Picture; Remembering those who left Mousehole for two world wars, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson