New memorial at Kedington Community Centre near Haverhill honours Second World War air crash casualties
The ‘dedication’ of everyone who contributed to the realisation of a five-year-project to create a new war memorial in Kedington, near Haverhill, has been applauded.
On Saturday, a new bronze memorial and roll of honour was unveiled inside Kedington Community Centre in recognition of the 21 airmen and one civilian who lost their lives – plus the three crew members to survive – in the five military plane crashes that occurred in the village between September 1938 and April 1945.
The memorial was completed by renowned sculptor and Suffolk resident Sean Hedges-Quinn, whose notable works include the statues outside Ipswich Town FC stadium of Sir Bobby Robson and Kevin Beattie and that of Dads Army’s Capt Mainwaring, in Thetford.
The names on the roll of honour, written on vellum, were crafted by calligrapher and illuminator Patricia Lovett, who attended the unveiling.
Having seen the memorial, which cost about £16,000 in total, monies raised by the memorial group, and the roll of honour unveiled, Kevin Betts, the creator of the project, said: “I’m very proud really to be able to see it through to fruition.
“It’s very much a group effort. It was my idea and I formed the group but you can’t do it on your own.
“It takes a group of dedicated people to keep the project moving along, and all credit to the group, they did that.”
The completion of the project, added Mr Betts, was delayed by the Covid pandemic.
The mould for the memorial was, he explained, already at the foundry when the lockdowns began in 2020.
The memorial includes the name of George Smith, a 20-year-old Home Guard officer who rushed to the aid of airmen in a Stirling that had crashed in Kings Hill in February 1943.
He died after being electrocuted by fallen cables and is buried in Kedington’s churchyard.
His grave has no headstone, and the memorial group is now raising funds to put that to rights.
The memorial also has a number of flowers engraved around its edges.
Each one represents a region from which the various men named on the memorial came from, such as the Prairie Crocus, the flower of Manitoba in Canada, home to one of those men killed, George Moore.
The memorial is also inscribed with an extract from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem ‘break, break, break’ which was used by Mr Moore’s family when they posted an obituary in the Canadian press.
