What's in a name?

Quite a lot when you're looking for someone.

Back in October of 2015, I was pulling together the story of Harperley prisoner of war camp and the 27 men who died there of Spanish flu in November 1918. You can read the story on the Durham at War website where there is also a database of the information I gathered on the men.

In the 1960s, the majority of bodies of German men who had died around the UK during the war were removed and reinterred at Cannock Chase Military Cemetery. When looking at Eduard Kaula, I couldn’t find him on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website, even though I had found the other 26 men.

I had found him on the German casualty lists 1914-1917, available on Ancestry

and I had found in the International Committee of the Red Cross Prisoner of War Agency records.

Record no. A40279

Through piecing together information based on the other locations on the other men and then clarified in the parish records of St James church, Hamsterley (where the men were originally buried), I found Kaula was listed as Hadla. The following images show how the name morphed from a fuzzy Kaula, to Haula, then to Hadla. On soft paper and using a typewriter, a capital K can become H, and a U become D.

DCRO ref: EP/Ham 28/30

DCRO ref: EP/Ham 28/44/

DCRO ref: EP/Ham 82/4

Some of the sources from the parish records are actually correspondence from the Imperial War Graves Commission (that became the CWGC). I submitted copies of these sources and more, to the CWGC. They have accepted this evidence and have now updated their records. 

Screenshot from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission