Reflections on life

R.L.H SKINNER from Devon, England, was trying to find the graves of his great-grandparents, William Gillespie and Sarah Ann Gillespie. All that Skinner knew was that they died in South India and that his great-grandfather was a conductor in the Indian Supply and Transport Corps.
One hundred and five years after their death, help came from The British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA). Lieutenant Colonel C.T.O.A. Wright, a life member of BACSA, dug out records and located the grave of William Gillespie who is buried at the Wellington Cemetery, in the Nilgiris, in 1901. Sarah Anne is yet to be found.
Gillespie was one of the countless soldiers and their families who served in battalions garrisoned at Wellington and were buried here.

James Cottam was buried here by his comrades from the King's Own Royal Regiment, Private Colin Craddock, William Richardson, Fusilier A.W. Potter, Arthur Jinks of the Ninth Warwickshire Regiment, Sidney Barnes of the Devonshire Regiment, Alfred Lewis from the Royal Army Service Corps and many more are like Rupert Brooke's Soldier, "... in some corner of a foreign field".
Dying young
Most of them are distressingly young. Not more than 27 or 28 years at the most. Every gravestone seems to have a story to tell. For example, October of 1918 seems to have been a sad month. A row of graves records the death of young soldiers, all of whom have died within days of one another — from the 8th Cheshire Regiment, from the Suffolk Regiment, Manchester Regiment...
Not just soldiers, even their young families seem to have succumbed to some mysterious illness. Cholera, or may be just plain homesickness. One wonders how Julia Riddle's family in far away England must have felt when they heard of her death in 1886 at the age of 27. They must have seen her off as a young bride to faraway India and now they would never see her again, nor have a chance to pray at her grave.
"The cemetery dates back to the years before the Boer Wars and World War I," says Colonel Wright, whose great-grandfather, Brigade Major C. Alford of D Troop Royal Horses, was a soldier in the British Army during the 1857 Mutiny. Many of his own ancestors including his father and grandfather lie in the Wellington Cemetery, and he will also be buried there. His grand aunt who was the first Assistant head Mistress of Lawrence School in 1865 also lies here. Colonel Wright plans to ask the school authorities to take up the upkeep of her grave.
Sad stories abound. A lot of infants are buried here, sometimes siblings from the same family. One heart-wrenching record reveals how, in 1868, Jane Catharine, daughter of George and Jane Izzard went missing and was found dead a few days later in the Shola at Wellington.
Most of the graves seem to be of young soldiers and their families who have succumbed to the hot and arduous journey to the sub-continent. Some soldiers came to Wellington, a convalescing station. While a lucky few lived to tell the tale, many didn't. (Interestingly, 26 World War II graves were exhumed and the bodies relocated to the Madras War Grave Cemetery.)
Ancient church
The Wellington cemetery was once part of a makeshift church set up in a barrack room by the army. The church was allotted its own cemetery. When that became full, Rt Reverend F. Gill, the Bishop of Madras on 5 September 1881, consecrated an adjacent plot. Then, a decision was taken to build a church for the successive British Regiments that would be cantoned at Wellington. The St. Georges's Church still stands — 121 years old. It is the largest of the four English-speaking churches in the Nilgiris affiliated to the Church of South India.
The tall red steeple is imposing. The old oak choir stalls and pulpit gleam gently with age, as do the altar rails and the lectern that were imported from England in 1887. The teakwood pews in the nave are all more than 100 years old as are the paintings of St. George, the Crucifixion and St Michael that were put up above the altar in 1892. An imposing pipe organ, also from England, was set up between 1900 and 1903. And it is played even today. Memorials — in honour of soldiers who died and were left behind by their comrades in the Wellington cemetery and elsewhere in India — dot the church.
After Independence, with the Madras Regimental Centre and the Defence Services Staff College, permanently established in Wellington, a plaque was erected in memory of those of the Madras Regiment who gave their lives during the World Wars and the subsequent battles fought by the country