SERJEANT ALBERT JAMES STARES
ROYAL ENGINEERS
4TH SEPTEMBER 1917 AGE 21
BURIED: BEDFORD HOUSE CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
Serjeant Stares, "Beaut darl" to his mother who chose his inscription - beautiful darling perhaps? - served with the 25th Division Signal Company, Royal Engineers. Maintaining communications along the front and between Battalion and Divisional headquarters was a dangerous business whether you were a despatch rider or a signaller using flares, telegraphy or wireless. If contact was to be maintained, wires had to be re-connected, messages sent or carried regardless of the military situation.
Albert James Stares, an insurance clerk in civilian life - a job he had been doing since 1911 when he was 15 - enlisted on 12 October 1914 at the age of 18. By the time he was killed in action on 9 September 1917, the day the 25th Division was withdrawn from the Ypres front, he had become a serjeant.
Mr and Mrs Stares had two sons: Albert James and Frederick Clarence. Frederick survived the war but his son, Frederick Lewis Stares, was killed in action on D-Day, 6 June 1944. His parents chose a similarly affectionate tribute, making use of their diminutive for him as had been done for his uncle killed 27 years earlier:
Sleep on Freddy
The dawn will break.