F. JEFFS

Frank Jeffs was a private in the 5th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He died on the 26th October 1918 at the age of 22. He was the son of Charles Owen Jeffs and Sarah Elizabeth Jeffs, of Sulgrave,

He is buried in Ste Marie Cemetery, Le Havre, France. During the First World War, Le Havre was one of the ports at which the British Expeditionary Force disembarked in August 1914. Except for a short interval during the German advance in 1914 it remained No 1 Base throughout the war and by the end of May 1917, it contained three general and two stationary hospitals, and four convalescent depots. In all 1,689 Commonwealth casualties of the First World War are buried or commemorated in the cemetery.

It seems conceivable that Frank Jeffs died of injuries at one of the hospitals in Le Havre. No one knows, but at 22 he was perhaps already a “veteran” in a conflict where boys became men overnight. He may have soldiered on through several years of the war only to die so near to home and a mere 16 days before it all came to an end.