and Chris Hunter

A teenage soldier who lied about his age so he could fight for his country finally has an official headstone acknowledging his sacrifice.

Northfleet youngster Gunner George Edward Valentine Field was just 16 when he signed up to the Army during the First World War and went on to fight with the Royal Field Artillery on the front line on the Somme.

After being gassed twice during combat he was sent to a military hospital and diagnosed with TB before being discharged from the Army in June 1917.

He died from the disease just over a year later, on October 22, 1918, aged just 19, but for unknown reasons his name was not included on the register with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), which meant he did not qualify for a commission headstone on his grave in Northfleet cemetery.

But, almost a century after his death, that has finally been put right and a ceremony to mark the placing of the headstone brought together relatives of Gnr Field who had never met.

Andrew Marshall, of the Gravesham War Memorials Trust, launched an appeal earlier this year to track down the soldier’s surviving relatives, which included an article in the Messenger, and between 20 and 30 of them, mostly great-nieces and nephews, arrived for the ceremony on Saturday afternoon.

Representatives from a number of veterans’ associations attended, as well as deputy mayor of Gravesham Cllr Harold Craske, MP for Gravesham Adam Holloway and the Rev Jackie
Littlewood, and other guests.

As well as speeches and prayers, wreaths and flowers were placed on the grave, and pupils from St John’s School in Rochester Road read The Exhortation, featuring the famous lines “at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them”, as well as the words inscribed of the Kohima Epitaph: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today”.

Mr Marshall said: “It was really quite poignant having such young boys read those words. Lots of family turned up due to the Messenger’s article.

"After the ceremony we went to the Royal Naval Association Club and everyone talked and got to know each other.

"What’s important to remember is that he volunteered and he did so in 1915 when the war had been on for a year and people would have come home severely injured, and people from the borough would have been killed, and he would have known that.

“He was on the front line, it would have been a tough baptism of fire for a young lad.

"Giving him this headstone is rejoining him with his comrades and that’s what compelled me to do it.”

Born in 1899 at Wycliffe Road, Northfleet, to Ellen and George Field, George Edward Valentine Field was one of many brothers and sisters and grew up in Dover Road East, Northfleet.

He went to school in Dover Road before becoming a farmhand. George enlisted aged 16, and served as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery.

He was deployed throughout northern France, including positions north east of Delville Wood on the Somme, where there was heavy fighting in September 1916 after the beginning of the campaign in July. He died at his home in Coopers Road, Perry Street, Northfleet.

George was laid to rest with full military honours, and his name was included on Northfleet War Memorial and All Saints’ War Memorial in Perry Street, but not on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) register.