surfgurl said:
Thank you for this info on recruiting. I have been puzzled about his background since I found out about him. I have done a bit of research and think he was born in Kings Norton, now part of Birmingham and was a bit bemused as to how he could have ended up in a graveyard in Somerset with no local connection. There was a cyclist corp attached to the Devonshire Regiment, so I guess he could have been recruited nationally to them.
If we assume he may have been with the Devonshire Regiment, I think from memory, they didn't ship out to the Western Front until later in 1915. From my limited reading they used the Army Cyclist Corps to send messages and patrol the coast in case of invasion. So it may well be that he was doing that.
I'll keep delving and find out some more info about him and the Army Cyclist Corps.
My great Uncle lost a leg during the battle of the Somme, when he was returned to England to recuperate , he was sent to a Hospital in Lancashire, his home town (and mine) is Lewes in East Sussex, so I expect he went to Lancs as that was where the most appropriate location was for his particular type of wound.
The returning wounded did tend to be put all over the place and not necessarily near to home, which may explain why Pte DUDLEY ended up in lovely Burnham-on-Sea ( I will be be holidaying at Brean shortly, after a week on Mallorca, and may well be in Burnham at some stage, which Church Yard is he in?)
I don't know if you are already aware, but his headstone is a standard Commonwealth War Graves Commission style. I suppose he could have had personal reasons for wishing to be buried there, as an alternative to being buried in one of the UK's CWGC cemeteries, are there any other CWGC
headstones locally?
Brookwood Military Cemetery and monument to those with no known grave is very near to where I work, in fact I have a key to the gate ( following a spate of drug abuse going on in the cemetery there are some real low life people about) I often have a quite moment of reflection when I'm around on patrol. For a military historian it is a fascinating place, with graves from ALL the combative nations, including German and Italian, Russian and American, plus some other European nations.