Lives of the First World War

known 30th April 1918

April 30, 1918, edition of the Market Harborough Advertiser. Willie March and his brother Ernest grew up in Great Bowden and did everything together. When they left school they both got a job at the Co-op – Willie in the grocery and Ernest in the butchery. It was obvious when the war started they would both join up and they both fought bravely at the Front. And this week they have both made the ultimate sacrifice together. They are just two of the TWENTY FIVE local men who are reported captured, injured, missing or dead in the terrible fighting in Flanders in the April 30, 1918, edition of the Market Harborough Advertiser. National newspapers, with their vast resources, are able to report the big picture of colossal armies surging this way and that. Market town newspapers like the Advertiser, however, are able to paint more intimate and poignant cameos. The story of the March brothers carries the headline In Death Not Divided and describes how PRIVATE WILLIE MARCH was found dead by his Lewis machine gun and PRIVATE ERNEST MARCH was ‘wounded so badly that he died on the way to the dressing station’. It is a terrible story for us to read a century later: imagine the despair of their family, losing two sons together. The Advertiser story concludes with massive understatement: “The news of their death has cast quite a gloom over the village.” And the final line of the story hints at even further angst. “Their father Mr March has another son at the Front.”

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