New War Memorial – Relatives Show True Cost of the Loss Represented

Published on: 1 Oct, 2018
Updated on: 2 Oct, 2018

Major Sean Birchall.

The new war memorial for those from Guildford who have been killed since the Second World War is a useful focus on the true human cost of conflict.

Few things can bring that home to you than talking to the relatives of those killed and listed in the open book held by the bronze figure representing all of them.

Brian Birchall, who now lives in Cranleigh, is the father of Major Sean Birchall killed nine years ago in Afghanistan.

Sean was a Guildford boy who went to St Peter’s School in Merrow and joked that he was the only comprehensive-educated officer in the Household Division.

Brian Birchall stands by the new war memorial in Guildford’s Castle Grounds on which is son Maj Sean Birchall is commemorated.

Aged 33, he was in command of IX company, around 100 men, of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, operating in Lashkar Gah, in the notorious Helmand province.

He was killed, as many men in that conflict were, by an improvised explosive device, an IED, a military acronym now familiar to most of us, the armour of the specially designed Jackal vehicle still insufficient to protect him from the blast.

Sean’s Welsh father’s dignified quiet pride in his son, who left behind a wife and 18-month-old son, was clear as he spoke just yards from the new memorial.

Bob Kettering shortly before he left to serve in Korea.

Ruth Drysdale (nee Kettering) spoke fondly of her cousin killed in an earlier war, Korea in 1952. Bob Ketteringham was killed there aged just 22. He lived his childhood in Stoke, Guildford before moving to Catteshall Lane, Godalming.

He was a national serviceman, a private with the Royal Norfolk Regiment and had recently been made his platoon’s radio operator. He was killed as he tried to help his wounded platoon commander Mike Reynolds who was rescued, following an attempted ambush, living to tell the tale and to become an army general.

Less than a fortnight before he was killed Bob had written what was to be his final letter home, looking forward to his return home in a few months.

He wrote, “…The weather here is very hot and dry again after two days of heavy rain which made the River Imjin rise forty feet.

A transcription of Bob’s final letter home, provided by his cousin Ruth.

“We have had a reasonably quiet spell lately and we haven’t seen much of Chinky, but although we hope it stays quiet I suppose it can’t last forever. Other parts of the front have been very active recently. Oh well, we have only got two and a half months to go in Korea now and then, after a few weeks in Hong Kong, I will be on my way home.”

Ruth described her cousin as a shy young man but it is well known that characteristics of heroism are often not revealed until the heat of battle is experienced.

In fact, a new clipping shows that it was not the first time he had put the safety of others before his own. When he was 13 he had rescued a little girl, swimming in the River Wey, from drowning.