We Shall Remember Them…even if they are not from our area and we know little about them.
And so it was that a group of people gathered in Hanbury Church and paid their respects to a man they know only from an old Bromsgrove Messenger cutting and a ‘missing,’ broken flagstone.
For 120 years Lance Corporal Michael Kelly’s body has lain in the churchyard after the 39-year-old Boer War veteran died in the Mount Convalescent Hospital.
He had no great connections with the village. It is thought he came from Dudley, no-one can find details of his family.
He had come to Hanbury via South Africa with the Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment who he fought with and won a Queen’s Medal with. He had seen plenty of action, including surviving the bloody battle of Spion Kop.
But his health broke down during the long retreat after the relief of Ladysmith.
It is known he was Roman Catholic, for when he died there was no ceremony in the church, simply a procession from the hospital and interment in the graveyard under a sandstone memorial stone.
A stone that became weather-damaged over time, then was broken, possibly by a falling tree, and was eventually removed in the 1990s because it was felt to be a safety risk.
And so Lce Cpl Kelly’s body would have lain unmarked, but for the Stoke Works and Hanbury branch of the British Legion.
When they came to hear about it they decided that it was important to replace it. If he deserved a memorial in 1900, then why did he not deserve one today?
Last week, after a campaign to raise £600 among local people, a new blue plaque was laid in the area of his grave at a socially-distanced service involving the church and the Legion.
Lest We Forget.
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