The forgotten roll of honour: How Wolverhampton remembered 900 fallen heroes of the Great War in 1922

And so on and so on. Dozens, scores, hundreds of names, alphabetically all the way to Sergeant Harry Yates, of the 1/6th South Staffs. 

They were the Borough of Wolverhampton's fallen from the Great War, all remembered by the city's official war memorial. While the names do not actually appear on the cenotaph in the shadow of St Peter's Church, they were listed in the programme published to accompany the unveiling of the memorial by the Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Doveton Sturdee on Thursday, November 2, 1922.

The scale of the sacrifice was huge, running to around 900 men from Wolverhampton area who had given their lives - and even then the list concluded with an appeal for people to come forward with information about anyone who might have been missed. 

Of these, there will have been many. A modern roll of honour compiled as part of commemorations of the centenary of the end of the Great War had the names of 4,272 Wolverhampton men and women. These included people who lost their lives contributing to the war effort in some way, such as in accidents in munitions factories.

An original programme kept in the Express & Star archive outlines the proceedings, starting with a procession from the Town Hall, a guard of honour comprising soldiers of the 6th Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment at the foot of St Peter's Steps, and a ceremony beginning with the singing of O God Our Help In Ages Past, and including a minute's silence and the sounding of The Last Post.