Thame Remembers cross delivered to Tanzania
THE Thame Rembembers project, which aims to deliver a special, Thame cross to the grave of everyone named on the Thame Memorial, wherever it may be in the world, has chalked up another, particularly satisfying success, as reported in the project’s latest newsletter. Thame_Remembers_Oct 2014
Rev Hugh Prentice delivering the Thame Remembers cross to the grave of Warrant Officer Arthur Henry Sutton, of Thame
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the Thame Remembers project was to deliver a cross to the grave of Warrant Officer, AH Sutton, who is named on the war memorial in Thame. The difficulty was that he was buried in Dodoma Cemetary, 500km up country in a remote part of Tanzania. By a fortunate coincidence, just three months into the project, the group leading the project was approached by a retired Australian missionary priest, Rev Hugh Prentice, who had been living in Thame during an extended visit to the UK, and was then returning to Australia and visiting some old haunts on his way. It so happened that he had previously been a missionary in Dodoma, was already acquainted with the cemetery, and was able to place the Thame Remembers Cross at the grave on October 29.
The man himself, 1762 Warrant Officer Arthur Henry Sutton, East African Transport Corps, died in Tanzania on Tuesday, June 19, 1917, age 31. Dodoma, where he is buried, is the administrative capital of Tanzania. It is situated in the centre of the country some 495 kilometres west of Dar Es Salaam, on the road via Morogoro. Dodoma was occupied by South African troops on July,29, 1916, and a casualty clearing station was opened from which burials were made in Dodoma Cemetery, which contains 121 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 11 of which are unidentified, and 31 Second World War burials.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Tanzania was the core of German East Africa. From the invasion of April 1915, Commonwealth forces fought a protracted and difficult campaign against a relatively small but highly skilled German force under the command of General von Lettow-Vorbeck. When the Germans finally surrendered on November 23, 1918, twelve days after the European armistice, their numbers had been reduced to 155 European and 1,168 African troops.
