Hello all,
I’m researching my great-uncle, Private William Elwyn Clee, service number 1842, 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, killed 1 December 1917 in the attack on Gonnelieu during the Battle of Cambrai. No known grave — commemorated on the Cambrai Memorial, Louverval, Panel 3.
I’ve built up a fairly detailed documentary case over the past few months and I’ve reached the point where I think fresh eyes — particularly anyone who’s dealt with IWGC/CWGC administrative practice from the 1920s, or who knows the Guards Division’s Cambrai actions well — might spot something I’m missing, or confirm I’m reading the documents right. Setting it out here rather than just in correspondence with CWGC, because I suspect some of you have seen this exact class of problem before.
The starting point. The Gouzeaucourt New British Cemetery concentration records include an entry reading “1842 GLEE, Pte. W.E., Welsh Guards” — no such surname exists anywhere else in British Army records. Service number and initials match Clee exactly. Looks like a straightforward clerical CLEE→GLEE misread, repeated across multiple reports rather than corrected.
The Memorial Row. The “Glee” entry sits within a Memorial Row — a group of men believed by the original Graves Registration Units to be buried somewhere in a defined stretch of ground, without individual graves being attributable. The original Schedule 92/c records this group under “Large Cross No. 14.” A later Revised Comprehensive Report (Schedule 108/c), which states it “cancels all previous Reports,” repeats the same list of names under “Cross No. E./19” — so the marker was genuinely renumbered, not just relabelled in a later transcription. I’ve confirmed this by direct high-magnification examination of the schedule image: the column is headed “Cross No.,” and the Welsh Guards bracket is marked “E.19” at its foot.
The recovery point. A closer read of the Concentration of Graves Burial Return shows eighteen unidentified Welsh Guards graves and ten named Cross 14 controls sharing a single map reference for original recovery: R.31.b.2.8. The named men include Webster, Webb, Borough, and Roderick — all confirmed 1st Welsh Guards, killed the same day. This grid reference falls exactly on the ground the battalion is shown crossing on Dudley Ward’s own operational map of the attack.
The one grave with a documented history. Among the eighteen unidentified graves, VI.G.17 stands out: a struck-through, refused identification, service number now forensically re-read as 296302, with a regimental abbreviation reading “R.H.” I’ve searched CWGC’s database for that number directly and against a Black Watch roll (working guess for “R.H.”), with no match either way. I’m not claiming this is Clee’s own grave — nothing distinguishes it from the other seventeen — but it’s the only one of the eighteen with any administrative trail at all, and I’d love to know if anyone recognises what kind of record would normally sit behind a “Refused” annotation like this.
Where I’ve got to. I’m not pursuing an individual identification — I think the evidence for that is genuinely too thin, and I’ve tried to be honest about that throughout. What I am pursuing is a collective Special Memorial within Gouzeaucourt itself, the form CWGC already uses 34 times at that cemetery. The case is currently with CWGC (several linked references, now with their Director of Commemorations personally) and, on the strength of a very close 2019 precedent at the same cemetery (Capt. Eric Wilson Edwards, identified through the MOD’s Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre rather than CWGC alone), I’ve also written to JCCC directly.
What I’d value most from anyone here:
• Anyone with knowledge of how IWGC Memorial Cross renumbering actually worked administratively, and whether an “A Form” or similar movement record for a specific cross is the kind of thing that tends to survive
• Anyone who knows the Guards Division’s Cambrai actions well enough to sanity-check the R.31.b.2.8 reading against the ground
• Anyone who’s dealt with a “Refused” identification annotation before and can tell me what usually caused one
Happy to post scans of any of the documents above if useful. Grateful for any thoughts, including “you’re wrong about X” — that’s exactly the kind of reply I’m hoping for.
Thanks for reading this far,
Tudor