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    “Why are so many Canadian soldiers buried at Bodelwyddan Church?”

    (Extract from BBC News report by Gemma Ryall)

    In a peaceful graveyard in a Denbighshire village, five soldiers’ graves have for decades attracted interest from both locals and historians.

    They lie amongst 85 of their Canadian comrades who were buried at St Margaret’s church in Bodelwyddan during World War I.

    But these five soldiers were not killed battling the enemy or by the flu pandemic that claimed the lives of many of their fellow troops.

    They were killed during riots in the town’s Kinmel Camp in March 1919 after the war – and their deaths are still shrouded in mystery and confusion.

    Despite much interest, historians still do not know exactly what happened and who killed the five men.

    They also fear more people could have died in the riots than the official figures show.

    The gravestone of one of the soldiers, Corporal Joseph Young, who died aged 36 of a bayonet wound to the head, bears the inscription “Someday, sometime, we’ll understand.”

    This section of the Flintshire War Memorials website is dedicated to the memory of all the Canadian Servicemen and women who died at Kimnel Camp and are buried in St. Margaret’s Church graveyard.

    Further information can be found by following the link to a BBC commentry – World War One At Home, St Margaret’s, Bodelwyddan: How did 85 Canadian soldiers die in North Wales. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p020pjsf

    There is also an article on the Homefront Museum website. https://homefrontmuseum.wordpress.com/tag/bodelwyddan/ and a book titled “The Kinmel Park Camp Riots 1919” by Julian Putkowski published by the Flintshire Historical Society (ISBN 0 9512776 1 8)

    Canadian Memorial

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