Robert Banks

I went to have a look at the recently unveiled Somme memorial in Heaton Park.

In 2016 I attended the commemorative event in the Park, a wonderful evening where people remembered together and recalled the lives of our ancestors through music, dance, film and words. It reflected on the losses endured and the lessons we may still learn. 

Prior to the event, I had submitted a tile to remember my great grandma's first husband, Robert Banks, one of thousands of 'memory squares' that formed the eighty metre long 'Path of the Remembered'.

The curved wall was designed to represent a Western Front trench stacked with sandbags (in my extra photo). I can't describe how I felt to see that his tile is one of the 320 that now form the permanent memorial.

His tile reads:
Private Robert Banks
28th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force
Born in 1891 in Darwen,
Robert emigrated to Western Australia in 1912.
He was wounded on the Somme on 19 August 1916.
Returning to England for leave, he married my great grandmother Holly on 14 March 1917.
He returned to duty in France on 20 March and was killed in action on 26 March 1917.
He was 26.
They had been married 12 days.
R.I.P.