I am Emma Gray and I am buried in this private plot but have no headstone. I was once the mother of a large family. Five boys and three daughters. Sadly, when it was time to be buried here in High Wycombe Cemetery, no one put up a memorial to me or to my four brave sons who were all killed in World War One.
At least I still had a couple of my children living locally but there must be several mothers here who had no child left to remember them.
My husband William also fought in the Great War. I married him in July 1886 and I was Emma Pearce back then of course. We were living in Wycombe Marsh when my middle sons were born but then we moved to 76 Desborough Avenue and later still lived at 1, Brook Street. My husband was a French polisher. We had Herbert, Flossie, Gilbert, William, Frank, Sydney and then Emma and Nellie.
We were a very patriotic family. I was to lose my son Gilbert, who was in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, 2nd Battalion, on 21 Oct 1914, killed in action when he was 20. He'd been a yard boy at one of the chair factories before he'd joined up. William was killed in action on 19 Jul 1916. He'd been with the Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry, 2/1st Bucks Battalion. He was only 19. Frank who was in the Territorials but who had transferred to the Royal Scots, was 20 when he died in 1917. And Herbert, my eldest, he'd only been in France for about six months when he was wounded in 1918. He was also in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry but he'd transferred to the Royal Berkshire Regiment, 5th Battalion. He'd left home long ago, and was living in Wycombe Marsh where he'd been employed at the Rye Paper Mill. His poor wife, with three kiddies!
Then my son-in-law, Frank Horseman was wounded and gassed. He was in the Royal Field Artillery. Poor Flossie was so worried, but fortunately he survived and they went to live in Wendover Street eventually, where my husband went to live after my death in 1936.
