Hello Roy G and everyone,
I came upon this post just by chance, looking through Gloucestershire names. The story of Henry J Cullimore has had a recent update which might interest you. I grew up in Cromhall, where Henry came from, and I have been trying to add some details, for the anniversary of the start of World War One, of the men whose names are on the village war memorial. I did some work a long time ago on my great uncle, Wallace Pratt, who died in the battle of the Somme. This gave me some experience. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website gave Henry's burial place as Budapest which made me wonder what he was doing there. I found out on the internet about the Royal Naval patrol boats on the Danube which appear to be there to enable essential supplies to get through to Germany. The Austrians had been commandeering them and conditions in Germany were desperate after the war. Henry appears to have been drowned as a result of a fire on board his patrol boat. Their petrol engines were prone to catch fire apparently.
I found a posting about this grave on another forum, YACF, a cycling forum. One of the contributors, Andy, had lived in Budapest and knew the grave. I told him what I knew and he offered to arrange to lay a wreath on the grave at the commemoration ceremony this year. Members of the forum paid for a wreath, arranged for it to be posted to Budapest and a friend of Andy, Nik took pictures of the wreath on the grave and of the ceremony for us. I took pictures of our ceremony in Cromhall and Henry's great niece, Helen, by our war memorial after the service. Her father, Henry's nephew, was there too and his wife and the family were very moved by this generous and open-hearted gesture. We will be documenting all of this for the record, probably the village website, there are many interesting and inspiring stories about the men of the village in this war . Best wishes, David Wicks
