Unfortunate Typo for CWGC

[gurkharifles]

Last February, my wife and I were visiting Chagford in Devon. Whenever we go somewhere new, I will always try and visit a local churchyard if there are any war graves there - we came across this grave to W Pike - Stoker RN. It looked like the stone was a replacement of the original as the marble looked fresh and the engraving crisp. It was my wife who noticed it first - "Surely that's not right?" she said - I must admit I'd missed it, but the family inscription read "THERE IS NO DEATH. THANK GOD FOR THAT. THEY ARE SAFE WITHIN HIS CAR" - It should obviously have read "CARE". As my wife said "if I was the family I'd be annoyed by that". I took photos and sent them off to the South West Mgr of the CWGC - suffice to say that last week a new headstone was erected with the correct spelling of the sentiment. CWGC were embarrassed that it had slipped through their quality controls but the important thing is their willingness to correct the error, the more I learn of the organisation the more impressed I am.

[grenadierguardsman]

Brilliant news.
Andy

[Fatherofthree]

Now here's a coincidence, earlier this evening I was perusing the medals on ebay and for some reason or another, I noticed a WW1 pair to a RN Stoker, named Pike.

Afetr reading the opening post, intrigued, I had a search and found them again and he was Henry John Pike, and strangely enough from Newton Abbot in Deveon which is only a few miles from Chagford.

A bit more research shows that the grave in Chagford is that of William John Pike, who had a brother Henry, but not the same Henry, he would have been too young to have served, William a casualty aged 18 and his brother being 5 years younger.

If I researched more, it is likely they were cousins.

Well done with having William's grave stone corrected.

Regards.

Brian