Lest we forget

[caddyman]

Despite its name, the village of Upper Slaughter in Gloucestershire is one of the most peaceful in the country. It is also one of a handful of communities mainly in England and Wales (mainly England; there are two in Wales, but none in the rest of the UK or the Republic of Ireland, which in 1914-18 was still part of the United Kingdom) that is marked out as different to the rest of the country.

Upper Slaughter has no war memorial.

Anyone who has been born and/or lived in the United Kingdom and most of the Commonwealth will be familiar with the war memorial that stands in every village, every town, every city commemorating the hideous loss of life in (primarily) the First World War, the first time most countries were introduced to industrialised warfare, and then the Second World War and all conflicts since. Not in Upper Slaughter, though, nor in a further 51 villages.

The village is unusual in that everyone who went to war in 1914-18 came back alive. Some of them came back broken in one form or another, but they made it back alive. Upper Slaughter is unusual in another way, too. While it is one of 52 communities in England that counted all its sons out and then all back in again in 1914-18, it is one of only 14 that did the same thing in the Second World War.

The village has two plaques. These display the names of everyone from the village who fought in each world war and who came back.

The term Thankful Village was popularised by the writer Arthur Mee in the 1930s. In Enchanted Land (1936), the introductory volume to The King’s England series of guides, he wrote that a Thankful Village was one which had lost no men in the Great War because all those who left to serve came home again. His initial list identified 32 villages.

In a November 2010 update researchers have identified 52 Civil parishes in England and Wales from which all soldiers returned.

Full list of Thankful Villages