208135 Pte. Henry Humpherson Edwards British Army 10th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment from:194, Yardley Road, Acocks Green, Birmingham. (d.25th Oct 1918) Harry Edwards died at the Royal Fortress Hospital, Cologne, Germany. Interred in the Sudfriedhof Cologne. Grave No VII E 2 . Harry died 18 days prior to Armistice being signed, in Koln of injuries sustained in Belgium he died on the 25th of October 1918.
His Death Certificate States that Harry died a Prisoner of War of wounds.
The 10th Battalion was Formed at Warwick September 1914 part of Kitcheners 2nd new Army. They trained on Salisbury Plain in 57th Bde. 19th Div. and in December 1914 went into billets for the winter. In March 1915 19th Div. Concentrated around Tidworth. On the 17.7.15 they landed in France.
Harry died on the October 25th 1918, fourteen years before I was born. I seem to have been raised in his shadow. Harry was my nanny's younger brother. I was brought up at 194, Yardley Road where the family lived. I remember the huge photograph of Harry, in uniform, on the wall over the sideboard and the scroll and his medals in a large glass frame which were by the hearth until at least 1960.
Nanny always told me that on Christmas Eve 1918, Armistice having been signed on the 11th November, they were looking forward to Harry's prompt return from Flanders. As they sat down for lunch a telegram arrived to say that Harry had fallen, Nanny's mother, having lost her first baby boy as a baby never recovered from this great shock, the loss of her only surviving son, she did not have the strength to fight pneumonia, and died, 5 years later.
My bedroom was 'Harry's room', the constant reminder of my great uncle. Further research proved that he, in fact, died of wounds on the 25th October, a prisoner of war, in Cologne, and is interred in the military cemetery there.
In the 38 years I have lived in Germany I have never forgotten the great sacrifice he gave and the heartbreak, my great grandparents and sisters suffered. Nanny maintained that he had been shot in the lower back. he was just nineteen years old. Harry is buried in the Commonwealth War Cemetery Cologne
(Germany - Nordrhein-Westfalen - Köln) Cologne War Cemetery lies within a large civil cemetery known locally as Köln Südfriedhof. There are now 2,482 First World War servicemen buried or commemorated in the Commonwealth plots at Cologne, all of them POW's. The total includes special memorials to a number of casualties buried in other cemeteries in Germany whose graves could not be found.
The Commonwealth section of the cemetery also contains 132 Second World War graves, mostly those of servicemen who died with the occupying forces. There are, in addition, 676 non-war graves and 29 burials of other nationalities.
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