CAPTAIN STEPHEN GARRETT
SUFFOLK REGIMENT
12TH MARCH 1915 AGE 36
BURIED: ESTAIRES COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagle's wings, and brought you unto myself
Exodus 19:4
Captain Garrett's wife, Mary, the mother of his four children, chose the inscription. It's a lovely image - a soaring eagle, swooping down with speed and power to carry the person off to safety, or in this case to God's keeping.
Stephen Garrett was a Director of the family engineering company Messrs Richard Garrett & Sons , manufacturers of agricultural machinery at the Leiston Works in Suffolk. Educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was the youngest and most able of three brothers, the one on whom the future of the company was to depend. His death may well explain the fact that the company went into receivership in 1932.
Captain Garrett was killed at Neuve Chapelle at the head of his men, many of whom came from the Leiston Works. His elder brother, Colonel Frank Garrett, commanded the 1st 4th Battalion Suffolk Regiment from its arrival in France in November 1914. However, after several weeks he was hospitalised with a nervous breakdown, unable to take the death of his men, many of who were his own employees whose wives and children he knew.
Later in 1915, the Christchurch Tramway Board imported a road roller from the Leiston works, which they named Neuve Chapelle in honour of Stephen Garrett and the men from the works who had been killed in the action.