Ned was universally popular. According to one of his regimental colleagues, no one could ever imagine him to possess the guts he had.
Writing to a contemporary who had sent a letter of condolence, Lady Lansdowne commented, ‘Perhaps I miss his laugh, and his jokes almost more than anything. When he did imitations, I used to say he must keep in practice so that he could do them for Charlie, his brother, after the war. He never stopped making plans for after the war, dreams that will never be fulfilled now. As I look back over the years of his life, his short life, it is all memories of the happiness that he gave us – nothing but happiness.’
On the 6th of June this year, which marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Normandy landings, the Reverend Caspar Bush, Team Rector of the Marden Vale Benefice, addressed an audience at the Bowood Chapel and spoke of the five local men (including Ned) named on the Calne War Memorial who died during the Normandy Campaign. The other four men were: Private Dennis Angell, Lance Corporal Ernest Burgess, Bandsman Dennis Dew, and Lieutenant Herbert Pegler.
He remarked: ‘Their names today can stand for the thousands of others from near and far who put their lives on the line that day, and never came home’.
Near the village of Ver-sur-Mer in Normandy, the British Normandy Memorial bears the names of 22,442 individuals British and those of other nationalities who were serving in British units who died while taking part in D-Day and the Battle of Normandy.
The inscription on the Memorial reads: They died so that Europe might be free.
