The final resting place of Benjamin Herbert Payen had, until about 1996, been a bit of a family mystery. All we knew was that he had died during the First World War. Did he had a grave or was one of the many soldiers who are still in the mud of Flanders? No one really knew.

Finding the actual whereabouts of Ben's final resting place was the result of some interesting detective work that started shortly after the death of his cousin Gwen (Dorothy Gwenllean Lewis) when two copies of the photograph of Ben were given to me.

On the back of one photograph of Ben in his army uniform the words "Our beloved son Ben Payen. Died May 6 1917, aged 28" are written. There is an additional reference to Ben's death in an autograph book that was once owned by his cousin Dorothy Gwenllean Lewis. In it is a copy of the same photograph with a note in Gwen's hand writing saying that he died trying to rescue a comrade from no man's land. How true that is has yet to be proved.

From the photograph I managed to deduce that Ben had been in the Essex regiment by identifying his cap badge. Then, by writing to the Chelmsford Museum Service (Chelmsford and Essex Museum and Essex Regiment Museum), this was confirmed when they where able to find a reference to Benjamin in HMSO Volume 'Soldiers Who Died, 1914 - 1919'.

I now had more to go on and wrote to the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission with the information I had and they, in turn, wrote back with the following information:

"Death: Killed in action while serving with the 9th Battalion, Essex Regiment. Burial: Happy Valley British Cemetery, Fampoux, Pas de Calais, France. Row B. Grave 8. Fampouxe is a village 7 Kilometres east of Arras (D33). Happy Valley British Cemetery is 5 kilometres south of the village down a 2 kilometre track on the road to Monchy-le-Preux."

In addition the information about Ben's death and burial the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission also confirmed his army number, 26838.

The above information can also be found on the The Commonwealth Wargraves Commission web site.

At last one family mystery can be put to rest.

©Barry Miller 2005