British corporal gets name on his grave after 100 years thanks to Michiel Vanmarcke

The twenty-something has been researching for five years. As a young boy, Michiel was fascinated by the First World War. It concerns the 27-year-old Corporal Herbert Pearce of the Worcestershire Regiment, who died here in 1918.

Michiel Vanmarcke : “If you look at the cemetery documents of the CWGC, I came to know that the unknown corporal was killed in Stasegem. That meant that the corporal was killed in October 1918 during the liberation of Harelbeke-Stasegem. If you then look at the number of missing of that regiment, around that period, you only get three or four missing. But it was one corporal, and only 1 corporal was missing from that regiment in the battle of Harelbeke. So the unknown corporal must have had Herbert Pearce to be.”

Thanks to the digitization

It seems like a piece of cake, but it took Michiel – barely 21 – five years to unravel the mystery. Thanks to digitization. “In the past you had to go to an archive in England for such a file to find out how people knew it was an unknown corporal. Then you had to go to another archive in another city to find out where the regiment was present, then you had to go to another archive. Now with the digitization all documents are online and you can derive various things with a few clicks.”

It’s not the first time Michiel has been able to link a missing soldier to a name, but it continues to make him feel special. “That soldier died for his country and also for our country. It is important that every soldier who died also has a name on his grave.”