PRIVATE JOHN PARDEY, MM
MACHINE GUN CORPS
14TH MAY 1917 AGE 32
BURIED: DUISANS BRITISH CEMETERY, ETRUN, FRANCE
It took me a moment or two to absorb this inscription because it was so blunt, so direct and so different. Private Pardey's wife, Rose, tells it to us straight - life was never the same again. In all the hundreds of epitaphs I've come across in the course of this project, I have never seen one that says this. And yet it must have been true for all the bereaved.
John Pardey was born in Sway, Hampshire, the eldest of John and Winifred Sway's ten children. I couldn't find him in the 1911 census but his widow lived at Garden Cottage, Audleys Wood, Basingstoke. Audleys Wood was the home of the wealthy Simonds family and it's possible that Garden Cottage indicates that John Pardey had been a gardener there.
The war memorial in St Leonard's Church, Cliddesden lists Pardey as having served with the 10th Hampshire Regiment. By the time of his death he was serving with the 50th Company Machine Gun Corps, part of the 17th Division.
During 1916 the Division was mainly on the Somme, and in early 1917 it took part in the Battle of Arras. Pardey died in a Casualty Clearing Station in Duisans of wounds most likely received in the capture of Rouex (9-17 May).