PRIVATE WESLEY GOODMAN
DUKE OF CORNWALL'S LIGHT INFANTRY
3RD JUNE 1918 AGE 24
BURIED: AIRE COMMUNAL CEMETERY, FRANCE
One might have thought it was a wife who signed for this inscription but no it was a father, Frederick Goodman, a china-clay labourer from St Stephen's-in-Brannell, Cornwall. Wesley was one of his parents' four children: their only son. In 1911 he too was working in the china clay industry.
Wesley served in the 1st Battalion Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. At the beginning of June 1918 the battalion was in the left sub-sector of the Le Sart front. Their casualty list for the month records that Private Goodman was wounded on 3 June and died the same day. The war diary records that 3 June was a quiet day and a quiet night. The previous day had passed very quietly too until 10.30 pm when a patrol of ten men under Second Lieutenant Eveleigh attacked an enemy post, "capturing one prisoner, wounding one and killing one - the remainder bolted". Although unmentioned, this sounds like the occasion when Goodman was wounded.