This originally appeared in the Watershed magazine for Remembrance Sunday, November 2008.
Ninety years on, this is a good time to remember two soldiers of Coates who were serving in 1918 – Bernard Vann and Tommy Taylor.
Bernard Vann spent much of his childhood in Coates Rectory. He was ordained before the outbreak of the Great War but then served as an infantryman for over 4 years with the Sherwood Foresters on the Western Front, where he was wounded 13 times. By 1918 he had been decorated with two military crosses and the Croix de Guerre when, on 29th September, he led his battalion “with such conspicuous bravery” that he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Four days later he was killed in action leaving his widow, a Canadian army nurse, to receive the medal from King George V at Buckingham Palace in 1919. His name, together with that of his brother Harry, is recorded on the war memorial in Coates and his communion cup is still used in St Matthew’s Church on Remembrance Sunday.
Tommy Taylor joined the Hampshire Regiment in 1918 when he was 18 years old. He was spared the horror of the trenches but sent to Murmansk in Russia as part of a mission to rescue the Russian royal family from the Bolshevik revolution and nearly lost his life on board a naval warship. Later he was sent to Turkey as part of the allied army of occupation. He served in Istanbul and Asia Minor until the severe winter of 1920-21 when he became dangerously ill. He was evacuated back to England and medically discharged. Once married, he lived with his wife in Thatch Cottage, Dark Lane before moving up to 2, Trewsbury Road. His final years as a widower were spent in Home Piece where he died peacefully, aged 95, on Easter Day.
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