WW1 Memorial Quilt – Jack

On Armistice weekend - It seemed suitable to start on another piece of my memorial quilt – so I designed and started knitting this piece.

This design is called Jack and it represents the unknown.  I do not know the occupation of a number of my soldiers.  I can’t find their enlistment records and in 1911 they were “At School”. 

The design for this piece is based on the Thiepval Memorial. I know – you can’t see it!  I had intended to produce a repeat pattern inspired by the shape of the memorial – however – I own a book called The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme by Gavin Stamp – in which there is a “floor” plan of the memorial and when I saw it I knew immediately – I am going to knit something like that.

I wanted to use the Thiepval Memorial for inspiration for soldiers of unknown occupation because it commemorates the unknown – the missing – the soldiers with no known burial site.  I have called it Jack for a special reason.  It is named after my grandfather’s cousin John Harris.   He was a rifleman in the 12^th battalion of the Rifle Brigade and died on 8 September 1916 aged 19.  What is strange about him is that I made him up and then found out he existed!

My grandfather said that his aunt and uncle did not have any children.  I thought this was unusual and one day I started thinking that if they had a son he would have been called John or Jack  Harris after his dad and he would have been born a year or so after the marriage – which would have made him the ideal age to die in World War 1.  I looked at the War Graves Commission website and typed in the name John Harris.  There are 700 men called John Harris who died but he was the third one I looked at – and I knew it was right because the record gave the name and address of his parents. 

Jack obviously wanted to be remembered after having been forgotten in the family for the best part of 80 years.  So this piece is for Jack and for all the other young men who died including another cousin twice removed - Frank Hatcher who died on 9 September 1918 aged 20, James William Merryweather my third cousin twice removed who died on 24 September 1917 aged 19, my third cousin three times removed Frederick Samuel Read who died on 16 June 1915 aged 19, and Lawrence Dimmick Willmett my second cousin three times removed who died aged 19 on 11 December 1917.  The latter was in the Royal Army Medical Corps – so he may have had a medical occupation but I don’t know what it was.

There are 2 other soldiers whom I should mention by name who are both recorded on the real Thiepval Memorial – Archibald Francis Jones who was my third cousin twice removed and John Deal who was my fourth cousin twice removed.  They both died aged 19.

For a blog about knitting – this post seems to be full of soldiers.  The knitting itself was very straightforward.   I used mainly stone colours to represent the memorial – but added the orange for a bit of contrast.  If you didn’t know the story behind the piece – it just looks like a graphic pattern.  That is the effect I wanted.

I am now working on the next piece and it is almost finished.  It was a much simpler pattern and much more portable.