Catherine adds missing names to London's war memorials - Londoner

Описание: Catherine has been researching the names of the soldiers from the borough of Barnet killed in the Second War World. Thanks to her work Barnet now has plaques commemorating those soldiers.
It all started when she realised that her father's name wasn't on the East Barnet War Memorial.

1000 LONDONERS

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TRANSCRIPT

My father's name didn't appear on East Barnet village war memorial. Initially I approached the local borough of Barnet. They were quite positive in their response but said I had to prove to them that he was a war hero; the difficulty was the MOD didn't seem to have an awful lot of information that they could give me. So my husband and I decided we would find out ourselves.
The fact that he was killed while on a Norwegian oil tanker made it even more difficult but we went to Norway and they had a full report of the sinking of his oil tanker.
The borough of Barnet did agree to put his name on the war memorial and there was a large ceremony in 1995, many of my family that was still left came and the local councils came and one of them said to me: "Why is your father the only one named on the second World War plaque? Was he the only one from this village to be killed during the Second World War?" Of course I said this was nonsense and there must be many more.
So it was only then that I started researching the names of those killed from the village during the Second World War.
I spent hours and days going through microfiche documents of the local press from 1939 to 1944 picking out names from the obituary columns...I went to schools and looked at their rolls of honours...I went to churches…
When I had completed the list there are 46 names. We had a rededication service. It was a multi-faith service. It was a wonderful feeling of achievement, something I had done for my father. After this time, some people from New Barnet approached me and said: "Will you do the same for New Barnet? Because none of our Second World War dead names appear on the war memorial" This time I found 136 names. I then decided that that was enough, I couldn't go on to do anymore. However, one lady was so delighted that she had seen her brother's name on East Barnet village before she died and in her will she left £100 for me to start my next project. So I couldn't stop at New Barnet I had to carry on. Well, my next project is the most challenging of all; it is for Finchley.
It is our intention that this war memorial will be built and in place in the grounds of Finchley Memorial Hospital for an unveiling on the 11th of November 2018 which will mark 100 years since the end of the Great War. These men gave their all. They gave everything for their country, these were young men so the least they deserve is to be remembered on a memorial.