bantarleton:The 200-year-old body of a British Coldstream Guards soldier was found in sand dunes in
bantarleton:The 200-year-old body of a British Coldstream Guards soldier was found in sand dunes in the Netherlands. Who was he?For more than two centuries, the remains of a soldier lay undisturbed on a windy beach in the northern Netherlands. He was killed during the French Revolutionary Wars, though how remains a mystery.The Coldstream Guards trace their ancestry back to 1650 and Cromwell’s New Model Army. This soldier has been identified as either Nathaniel Haines or Thomas Taylor, both soldiers in the Colstream’s Grenadier Company.If the regiment can pinpoint a name, it will try to find the soldier’s descendants, though the retired colonel overseeing the transferral of the guardsman’s remains admits it seems unlikely.“But we will try. If not, Plan B is to cremate the remains, and scatter his ashes on Horse Guards Parade before the Trooping the Colour with due dignity and ceremony, and the guardsmen of Number 7 Company Coldstream Guards - his descendants - can tramp his ashes into the welts of their boots on one of the nation’s most famous parade grounds, 200 years later. I hope it will be a fitting resting place for an unknown soldier who died long ago, doing his duty.”The archaeological report on the find opens with a quotation from Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier:“If I should die, think only this of meThat there’s some corner of a foreign fieldThat is forever England.”Soon, though, this one soldier will come home at last. -- source link