A fitting service to remember

It was based on the information uncovered by residents Sandy and Michael Sell, whose dedicated research has ensured the stories behind the names on Pagham's war memorial are known.

The scene for the moving service in St Thomas a'Becket Church was set by the vicar, the Rev Keith Smith. He had created an artistic display of poppies and candles to depict a river of blood.

A visual display showed where many of the young men whose names appear on the Pagham War Memorial had fought and died. The graves of some of them were also shown, though the final resting place of many is not known.

There were readings of poems which included In Flanders Fields, and If We Return.

A work called Peace by a ten-year-old girl, Ivanka Karaivanova, from Bulgaria, was also read out.

Those at the Armistice Day evening service learned the stained-glass windows in the north transept of the church were dedicated to the memory of Lt Charles Herbert Hartmann of the Royal West Kent Regiment.

Those in the south transept are dedicated to Lt John Lawrence Mathews, who had come from Bognor.

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