The War Grave With The Wrong Name And The Man Who Came To Correct It

My aunt volunteers with a group that photographs and transcribes war graves. It is careful, unglamorous, deeply moving work and she has done it for nine years.

In a corner of a cemetery in the north there is a stone that has been recorded, in every database, as a name that does not exist in any regimental record.

Not a misspelling of a known name. Not a man transferred. Nothing. A name with no man behind it.

She photographed it on a Tuesday. She wrote it up on the Wednesday and put a note in the file: "Possible stonemason error. No match."

On the Thursday, at the cemetery, a man came and stood beside her while she was working two rows over.

She described him to me as: old, but not frail. An overcoat that she thought was "too warm for the day". Very clean shoes.

He said, "You've got the K wrong. It's a hard K, at the front."

She said she did not know what he meant.

He said the name. He spelled it. He said it twice, patiently, and he said the second name too — a middle name, which is not on the stone at all.