The Croydon Guardian has launched a campaign to have the borough’s forgotten soldiers honoured for their sacrifices during World War I.
Instead of being remembered for their heroism, the bodies of 26 soldiers who died while being treated at Cane Hill lunatic asylum in Coulsdon lie hidden in an unmarked grave.
The names of these brave men, who fought for their country and died as a result of the war, do not appear on any official or state memorial.
Historian Adrian Falks, who uncovered the scandal, is calling for the soldiers’ names to be included on the national Debt of Honour and wants local bishops to hold a memorial service for the soldiers at their final resting place in Mitcham Road cemetery.
Mr Falks fears their names were deliberately excluded from the Debt of Honour because they were asylum patients.
The Debt of Honour is a database listing all the Commonwealth soldiers who died during or as a result of the two World Wars.
It has no record of any of our Cane Hill soldiers.
He said: “The names of these soldiers have been utterly obliterated. They have been wiped out as if they never existed.”
A spokesman from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) told the Croydon Guardian there was no official policy to omit the names of soldiers in asylums from the Debt of Honour.
He said: “The Commonwealth War Graves is currently investigating this case, and will attempt to discover what happened.”
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