Old Bloxhamist, Matthew Dixon has spent thirteen years research the lives of the 79 OBs who died in WWI
An OB’s efforts to commemorate the dead of the Great War have recently been completed after 13 years of research.
For the past 18 months, Bloxham School has honoured the 79 Old Bloxhamists who died in the Great War, both in “real time” as we reach the centenary of each death, and by sharing their stories in the unforgettable production of “79” in 2014.
Those who have followed these commemorations will be interested to hear about the mammoth project undertaken by OB Matthew Dixon (Cr ’89 – ’94), which has taken 13 years and has unearthed an incredible amount of information about each of the 79. Endless searches of Battalion war diaries, census records, medal index cards, newspaper archives, official and regimental histories allowed Matthew to build a picture of the men, their lives and the actions that led to their deaths. The fruits of his research can be found on his website, Bloxham School Roll of Honour. This unique resource includes the 78 photographs the school holds of the dead (one, Hilary Pullen Burry, is missing) as well as images from the graves and memorials where they are now commemorated. In addition to the cemeteries of the Western Front, Matthew travelled to English country churchyards and battlefields as far away as Gallipoli to secure these images. The first grave he visited was that of Lieutenant Archie Horner (pictured above), killed at Ypres in April 1916. Matthew says that of all the 79, the photograph he finds the most poignant is that of 2nd Lieutenant Roland Rice Powell of the Somerset Light Infantry, killed in August 1918 at the age of 19.’
For our commemoration of the 79, please follow the school and Old Bloxhamist Twitter and Facebook accounts. We have two especially significant centenaries approaching; The Battle of Jutland on 31st May, and the beginning of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July, in which a quarter of the Old Bloxhamist fatalities occurred.