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This story is taken from an interview with Brea and Ed Herron at the Newry Town Hall, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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In the eighties. We went camping.
My father has no actual grave, though we know exactly where he was killed and with whom he was killed. When they went to rebury the bodies, his couldn’t be found. Not all of it, anyway.

Couldn’t be identified.

But in the 80s we went camping, and we decided, my mother was getting very old and we didn’t know anything at all. And discovered that his name is on a big memorial in Bayeux. Which nobody had ever told her about, and all the other widows had pictures of their husband’s grave, and she always wondered why she didn’t get one. But of course she wasn’t able to do anything about it, we investigated and found all this and took her over. Our children took turns going over each year, and found all this out. And then found about Ed’s father, after all that. He was in the same spot.

When we were starting this, there were no computers or anything. No internet, in a sense, and everything had to be done by letter. And we knew very very little. But I had some basic facts. One that he had been killed at a place called Bon-Rapeux, a little crossroads, and the man who buried him had since married a Newry girl so was in Newry, and knew where he buried him. But nobody knew where Le Bon-Rapeux was.

When I was a child I’d be down the town with my mother, and she’d say to me “there’s the postman buried your father”. Because he wasn’t killed, you see, and he’s only dead a few years ago. But he had buried him, and told my mother he buried him on Sunday morning. The chaplain had written to my mother, and we have the letters, they’re in the Newry book. The chaplain said he buried him at Bon-Rapeux in the orchard, and we were able to go and find the people whose house he was killed in, and the cornfield and all where he was buried, exactly there.

Same as the picture of 1944. I arrived in this place, and met of all people the first person, the Mayor, and asked of him did he know where that triangular orchard was? Right there, right where it was.

It was exactly the same. The walls from the original 1944 photo were still there. More tumbled down, but quite identifiable.

And bullets in practically every bit of stone you lifted. We took a bag of them home. They fought there for about 6 weeks, I think. And that’s probably why he couldn’t be identified. But eventually after all this as well we met the postman, Mr Howells, down Hill St one day and said “Could you tell us something? We don’t know anything, you’re the only one. Who was he killed with?” so he said “he was killed with a fellow named Smith”.

Before that, he had no known grave. We knew that, but we insisted on looking at every gravestone in every cemetery. It took days and days. I happened to meet a man who was in charge of one of the cemeteries, and he said that many of the Welsh soldiers had been buried in this certain graveyard, this military cemetery. So we went out there. And we searched again every headstone, knowing we couldn’t find it but just searching it anyway. And I came across one that said, was the Regiment’s name on it? “Known onto God”. 21st of July 1944. That was the date he was killed, and I thought “I’ve found it”. And I had no proof, of course, I’d found it. And as I walked along a bit further I found another identical one, same date, and I was annoyed.

And both of them had Welsh soldiers killed right beside them.

On our first trip I took Brea’s mother, sent her through the graveyard on her own and said “there are 2 stones same date as your husband was killed”, and she never saw the other one at all. She went straight to that one. Same one as I did. I had 2 of our daughters at that time, and I hid each person round the trees and parks, sent each person in on their own, and each of them found on their own the same one, and didn’t see the other one. So we repeated that. We did it with Brea the next year.

You just looked at it and thought “this is the grave”. And then the postman, and several years later I said “who was he killed with”, he said “Shivers and Smith”. And that was the 2 men by the grave, the one we had chosen.

They were buried beside him, one on each side of him.

And we took my sister, only about 5 years ago. She’d never been, she didn’t know names or anything. And we asked her to go and look. She found the 2 sets of graves, and she stopped at this one and burst into tears. And she knew nothing about Shivers and Smith. So we sort of have adopted that.

On my very very first visit, I remember that Brea’s mother had stopped there and burst into tears, the same one. We sort of have adopted that.

We met the people, the man and the wife, who were just married at the time and been evacuated. And they were living there, in the same house. Really lovely. And the son saved a helmet for us. One year we went over, and he had dug up this helmet out of the field, and we have it in the house now. A British helmet, and it’s really fascinating stuff.

The battle where he was killed, 115 people were killed in it, including 3 officers, in that 1 skirmish.
[6-wk period?]
yes. The first big engagement. Some of the people had been killed on the way, but this was the first major battle, that 115 people and 3 officers were killed at this Bon-Rapeaux place. So it’s all there, I know exactly where he was.

It’s a wee slope, if you walk up it you can feel yourself gently going up. The British and the Canadians got up it. You just drive past it, you wouldn’t see it. There’s no hill there.

It’s only 112 ft from the ground level or something like that. That’s why it was called. It’s very gentle hill. We sat when we visited, we sat in the corner, right in the place he was killed. Reading his letters, his last letter. And we read that on the 40th or 50th anniversary of him writing that exact letter. And then we could trace back where his main group had been. He had left the letter, and that was it.

He had kept a diary, from when he met my mother until 14th June, and that was when they got their francs. And he’s got his last letters in it. “We had our francs issued today, so now we know we’re on our way” sort of thing. And wrote the whole letter to us, summing up our thoughts about us and my mother. Oh, I have it in the Newry & Mourne War Dead book, they published it all. Right up there, and his last unfinished letter at Le Bon Rapeux.

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