24 November 2009

5337200 L/Cpl Robert Henry Lodge, 4th Bn, Wiltshire Regt

5337200 Lance-Corporal Robert Henry Lodge of the 4th Battalion, Wiltshire Regt, died on the 24th November 1944. He was 25 years old and had been born in Berkshire. He had originally joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment but obviously transferred to the Wiltshire Regiment later on.

Robert Lodge has no known grave and is commemorated on panel five of the Groesbeek Memorial in the Netherlands. This from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:

"Allied forces entered the Netherlands on 12 September 1944. Airborne operations later that month established a bridgehead at Nijmegen and in the following months, coastal areas and ports were cleared and secured, but it was not until the German initiated offensive in the Ardennes had been repulsed that the drive into Germany could begin. Most of those buried in GROESBEEK CANADIAN WAR CEMETERY were Canadians, many of whom died in the Battle of the Rhineland, when the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Infantry Divisions and the 4th Canadian Armoured Division took part in the drive southwards from Nijmegen to clear the territory between the Maas and the Rhine in February and March 1945. Others buried here died earlier or later in the southern part of the Netherlands and in the Rhineland. The cemetery contains 2,610 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, and nine war graves of other nationalities. Within the cemetery stands the GROESBEEK MEMORIAL, which commemorates by name more than 1,000 members of the Commonwealth land forces who died during the campaign in north-west Europe between the time of crossing the Seine at the end of August 1944 and the end of the war in Europe, and whose graves are not known."

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Sources:

Ancestry.co.uk (1939-1945 Roll of Honour)
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

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