There is only one Bajan World War 1 soldier buried in a Commonwealth War Commission Grave (CWGC) in the Parish of St James. That soldier is Siebert Josiah Raper or the elusive Siebert Raper as he has become known to me.
The CWGC website shows that Siebert is buried in Plot P Row R Grave G in St James Parish Cemetery. The website also states that “The Commonwealth grave is marked by a headstone set into the wall of the small chapel within St James Parish Cemetery, the headstone is to the right of the altar immediately behind it.”
This is the story of my not entirely successful attempt to locate Siebert’s grave.
In late 2016, I asked a friend to visit St James Parish Church and look for Siebert’s grave. My friend visited the Church, had a good root around but couldn’t find him. He had another try a few days later. Still no sign of Siebert. I admire the optimism of that second attempt. Siebert died in 1919 so it was highly unlikely he would have returned from a short break.
The Church is in Holetown which was previously known as Jamestown. It is the area where the very first 80 English settlers and 10 slaves landed on the island on 17 February 1627. They named the town Jamestown after King James I of England. The slaves were almost certainly young white English men who had been abducted and indentured. These men could buy their freedom after 5 years labour.
Consequently, St James Parish Church was the first to be built in Barbados. The first version, made of wood, was constructed in 1629 but was destroyed by the great hurricane of 1675. A stone structure was built by the 1690s but this was destroyed by the hurricane of 1780. The Church escaped the worst of the 1831 hurricane. The present version of the Church was completed in 1874 and consecrated by Bishop Mitchinson on Easter Tuesday, 1875.
In July 2017, I visited St James Parish Church. I knew my search for Siebert would not be straightforward but I was determined to locate him. Inside the Church there is an area within but separate from the main church which could constitute a chapel. It was here I contained my search. There was no obvious sign of a gravestone. I checked walls, pushed locked doors, looked under pulpits, pulled back cloths and curtains but not a mention of World War 1 or Siebert.
What I did find was a magnificent stained-glass window (see below) which is a memorial to those who gave their lives for their country in the Great War. Dedicated by Bishop Berkeley on November 11, 1924, it is inscribed, ‘To the Glory of God and in Memoriam. 1914-1918’.
Undeterred I scoured the graveyard outside the Church. As with other churches it looked obvious that the Parish Church burial area was the preserve of the great and good. There was no sign of lowly ranked soldiers or other artisans in the cemetery.
There was an impressive bell on display. I learned that it is the oldest bell in Barbados being over 300 years old and created by the same company – the Whitechapel Bell Foundry – that produced Big Ben. It fell from the belfry in 1881 and was cracked. Luckily no one was underneath it at the time. Although a member of the Church donated funds for a new bell the Church knew the history and value of the old bell so sent it to England for repair. It has been on display since returning from England.
I also found the Devil’s Gate. Tradition has it that the Gate is opened half an hour before the service is due to begin. When the Church bells toll the Devil is said to leave through the Gate at which point the Gate is closed excluding the Devil and leaving the worshipers in peace and free to worship.
Having set off with a confident determination to find Siebert I had to call off my search. It was with a feeling of despondency I set off back to Bridgetown. I really didn’t expect to have time to make another attempt to track down Siebert.
I walked south along the coast road taking in a little of St James. It is the most affluent of the Bajan Parishes and is sometimes known as the Platinum Coast. It is the home of several 5-star hotels including the palatial Sandy Bay Hotel as well as exclusive designer brand shops. Celebrities abound – apparently. I didn’t spot any. There certainly weren’t any on the bus back to Bridgetown but the usual mode of travel to Bridgetown for Sandy Bay residents are the private yachts which bring them into Bridgetown harbour just below the Marina Bar. This is a great stopping off point and serves cheapish, cold beer and is a great spot to watch Barbados life pass by.
I noticed that Holetown was twinned with the London Borough of Haringey. It seemed a strange link and it led me to look at twinning arrangements for the other 31 London Boroughs seven of which have no ‘twins’. Barnet has the most twins with eight. Only two other Boroughs apart from Haringey are twinned with a town in the Caribbean or, in other words, 29 London Boroughs feel no need to be twinned with sun drenched West Indian communities. Haringey makes up for this though. Of its seven twins, three are in the Caribbean. Holetown, Arima in Trinidad and Tobago and Clarendon in Jamaica. You could throw in Larnaca for good measure and Haringey’s twins begin to look like the contents of a holiday brochure. If anyone thinks councils select their twins with glamorous overseas trips in mind I commend to you the London Borough of Camden with only one twin – Doncaster in South Yorkshire.
After the usual exhilarating bus journey back to Bridgetown I visited my regular stop on the beach – Doreen’s Bar. This is where you can get 4 bottles of Banks’ beer for $10 Bajan and excellent service into the bargain. I needed the drink purely to calm my nerves after the bus journey you understand.
I recapped on what I knew about Siebert. He was born in 1895 or 1896 and lived in Paynes Bay, St James. No doubt he would be amazed if he could return to his old home and see how it has turned into the Platinum Coast.
When he enlisted, his Recruitment Form shows he was 20 years old, 5 feet 11 and a half inches tall and weighed 150 pounds. So, clearly a tall, thin young man. He was Black and his hair was described as ‘woolly’. This was the normal description of African-Caribbean hair at that time. His religion was stated to be Wesleyan. His father, Edmund Raper, was still living and was recorded as his next of kin.
He volunteered for the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) and passed his medical examination on 18 January 1916. On 31 January 1916, he took the “Oath of allegiance and signed his name in the Oath book of the Barbados Volunteers” the chairman of the Barbados Recruiting Committee having first confirmed Siebert as “fit for service”.
Things don’t always move quickly in Barbados and it looks as if that was also the situation in 1916 as it was not until 15 September 1916 that Private Siebert Raper of the 5th Battalion of the BWIR Service number 5635, left Barbados to join the War. Perhaps he trained in Barbados during the period January to September 1916? Certainly, his time in Barbados from 31 January 1916 seems to have counted towards his war service and therefore any pension that was due to him.
He sailed with the 2nd contingent of volunteers on His Majesty’s Troopship Magdalena. The Captain was Clinton Austin Reed.
Siebert’s military records get a little confusing at this stage. He is shown as serving in Egypt from 30 September 1916 but not disembarking in Alexandria, Egypt until 2 November 1916. The most probable explanation is that, in common with other BWIR troops, he sailed to England to train at Seaford in Sussex before being posted to Egypt.
He served in Egypt for 4 months until February 1917 when he was posted to France, leaving Port Said on 1 February 1917 and landing in Marseille on 10 February 1917. He served a further year in France before leaving for the West Indies on 21 May 1918. He was formally discharged on 10 June 1918.
The 5th Battalion was very much a reserve unit and at some point, possibly when he was transferred to France, Siebert joined the 3rd Battalion.
There is no record of Siebert having been wounded in action but that wasn’t too unusual as many of the BWIR troops were deployed away from the front line in support roles such as digging trenches, building roads, acting as stretcher bearers and loading ships and trains. The conditions were such that almost all the BWIR troops that perished in World War 1 succumbed to diseases such as malaria and pneumonia rather than being killed in action. It would seem that Siebert was no exception.
Siebert set sail to Barbados for the final time on 21 May 1918 sailing on the Ambulance Transport ship Formosa. He arrived in Barbados and was formally discharged on 10 June 1918. Some records suggest he was discharged to Jamaica but that isn’t true, he went direct to Barbados and for some reason the discharge forms weren’t completed until 24 October 1918 long after Siebert had settled back into Paynes Bay. He wasn’t around to sign the form which was completed in his absence and somewhat unkindly and lazily described his military character as ‘not known’. His service totalled 2 years 131 days.
His Proceedings of Discharge Form confirms in very formal terms that Siebert was “No longer physically fit for war service during a period of war or demobilisation King’s Regulations para (xvi) (a) 1912).”
He suffered many ailments during his War service. These included syphilis, diphtheria, facial paralysis, inflamed lymph glands and most latterly in January 1918, pneumonia. It is extremely likely that it was pneumonia that rendered him permanently unfit for action, leading to his return to Paynes Bay.
Siebert was entitled to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Military records dated 24 July 1924 show that he never collected these medals. This was because he died on 19 February 1919 at the tragically young age of 22.
One can only hope that he found some comfort in being at home for the last 8 months of his short life.
These thoughts preyed on my mind and then on the last day of my stay on the island and having mocked my friend’s optimism in thinking Siebert would suddenly appear out of nowhere I too fell under his spell and felt compelled to have one last attempt to track down the elusive Siebert Raper.
Like before, I checked walls, pushed locked doors, looked under pulpits, pulled back cloths and curtains. Obviously, nothing had changed. Siebert remained elusive. I found an office in the Church grounds and enquired about Siebert. I was told that he could be found at the St James Parish Church Cemetery. “But I’ve looked” I said! Then I realised something perhaps I should have thought of earlier. There is a quite separate cemetery for poor people like Siebert – war hero or not. I was directed to the Parish Church Cemetery, it was about a mile away. I had to walk south along the coast road, turn left at the Sandy Crest Medical Centre, walk past some very palatial houses and the Cemetery would be on the left.
The Cemetery was exactly where the lady in the office told me it would be. Better still I could see a small building that fitted the CWGC description of “a small chapel”. The not so good news was that the chapel was clearly being rebuilt and was cordoned off, accessible only to the builders, all of whom were wearing hard hats and some of whom were actually working.
There is something about Barbados that makes warning signs much less threatening so, climbing over rubble, yellow tape and the odd ‘digger’ I ventured up to the partly renovated chapel and looked through the window (more accurately a hole in the wall) to look for Siebert’s memorial. I couldn’t see it but then again surely they wouldn’t rebuild the chapel without first of all removing the headstone? In fact, my immediate concern was that they should replace it once the chapel is complete.
All was far from lost though. I could still find Siebert’s grave in Plot P Row R Grave G. I looked, and looked and looked but no sign of his grave. Being a man I’m reluctant to ask for directions but given that I’d put this much effort into tracking down Siebert I decided to visit the office in the Cemetery and ask for Siebert’s exact location. The lady very confidently told me that there was no Plot P Row R. With slightly less confidence I showed her my copy of the CWGC website page quoting the Grave location. This caused her confidence to wane too but all she would concede was that she didn’t know where Plot P Row R could be.
I decided to have another look. As good fortune would have it there was a man digging a new grave in a deserted corner of the cemetery. Grave digging in Barbados is hard work. The ground is rock solid and the sun hot. Gravediggers tend to erect a large umbrella over the grave to protect themselves from the searing sun. As I approached the umbrella I realised if I was digging a grave in what I thought was a totally unoccupied part of the cemetery I would get quite a shock if someone came up and knocked on my umbrella. As I knocked on the umbrella I realised I was not the only person that would get such a shock.
Once the grave digger had stopped trembling I asked him if he knew where the grave of Siebert Raper could be found. “He’s in the chapel” came the confident reply. I explained that I knew that but he was also in Plot P Row R Grave G. The grave digger professed not to know where Plot P Row R was. I was going to enquire how then did he know where to dig a grave? Did they give him directions or did he just dig a hole anywhere that took his fancy? I thought it more tactful simply to let him know that Siebert was buried in 1919 so is there a particular Row that might have been active at that time? Without any sense of sarcasm, the grave digger, a chap in his 20s explained that he wasn’t working at the cemetery at that time. In fact, he added, he didn’t think even Mr Cummins who has retired was digging graves in St James in 1919.
In fairness to the young grave digger, Barbados shares with Japan the distinction of having the most centenarians per capita in the entire world. I put it down to the laid-back nature of the people. But even Mr Cummins would have to be at least 120 years old if he had dug Siebert’s grave.
I decided that if Siebert did have a grave it had long since disappeared. It is possible he didn’t have a grave and the only memorial to him is the headstone set in the wall of the chapel. But why, of all the World War 1 soldiers, is Siebert the only one without a grave?
I headed back to Bridgetown admitting partial defeat although I had located Siebert’s headstone even if I didn’t actually see it.
Back in Doreen’s Bar on the beach, watching the sun go down I decided to take another look at the CWGC website. There I found an entry dated 24 May 1924 presumably from a civil servant stating that he couldn’t locate the grave. It sent a shiver down my spine to think of a young official spending a May Day almost 100 years ago doing exactly what I had done earlier that day. He went on to write that the headstone had been built into the Cemetery wall. I don’t know if he meant the chapel or simply a wall in the Cemetery. It does seem to confirm that Siebert did have a resting place in 1919 but by 1924, for whatever reason, his headstone had been removed to stand alone in the Cemetery or the chapel where it now permanently resides.
I haven’t given up on Siebert and next time I’m in Barbados I’ll be popping into the chapel to say hello, supposing the building work is finished of course. As I said, things can move slowly in Barbados. I also know that I won’t be able to resist having another look for Plot P Row R Grave G. I may even bump into Mr Cummins.