Five Days Married. Then War Made Her a Widow: The Heartbreak Behind Folkestone’s Remembrance Sunday
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There is an empty chair at a table somewhere. A photograph of a young man who never grew old. A wedding that lasted just five days. Children who grew up without their father. Parents who waited for a son who would never come home.
These are the stories behind Remembrance Sunday.
Today and again on the 11 November, people across Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate, Hawkinge, New Romney, Lydd and our surrounding villages will gather to remember those who died in war.
At 11am, heads will bow. The Last Post will sound. For two minutes, we will stand in silence.
But what are we really remembering?
Not simply the names carved into stone. Not just the uniforms, the medals or the battles.
We’re remembering people. People who had lives, families, hopes and dreams. People who never got to grow old.
And people whose deaths left holes in families that could never be filled.
His family lived in Radnor Park Road, Julian Road and later Earls Avenue. His father, William, worked for Folkestone Gas and Coke Company. Clive had an older sister called Grace.
When the First World War came, Clive served with the Royal Field Artillery.
He was a brave young officer. In October 1916, during fighting in Greece, he was seriously wounded by shellfire. Despite his injuries, he insisted that other wounded men receive treatment before him.
He died on 11 November 1916.
He was just 23.
This Wednesday, 11 November 2026, marks exactly 110 years since his death.
Clive never knew that 11 November would become the day Britain remembers its war dead. The fighting continued for another two years.
His grave lies in Thessaloniki, Greece, thousands of miles from the streets where he’d grown up.
His name lives on at Folkestone’s War Memorial.
But to his parents, William and Emily, and his sister Grace, he wasn’t simply Lieutenant Griffin.
He was Clive. Their son. Their brother. Someone they loved
On 5 February 1941, Peter married Jean Helen Chapman.
They had their whole married life ahead of them.
Five days later, on 10 February, Peter was flying his Spitfire when it crashed at Capel-le-Ferne in extremely poor visibility.
He was killed.
Jean had been a wife for just five days. Now she was a widow.
There would be no first wedding anniversary together. No growing old side by side.
Peter was buried in Folkestone New Cemetery at Hawkinge.
His younger brother Dennis survived the war and went on to become a distinguished pilot himself. When Dennis died in 1994, he was buried close to Peter, as he’d wished.
More than half a century separated their deaths. Yet the bond between the brothers remained.
War didn’t simply take Peter’s life. It took the future he and Jean had only just begun.
The day war came to Tontine Street
Not everyone who died in war wore a uniform.
On 25 May 1917, shoppers filled Folkestone’s Tontine Street. Mothers were out with their children. People were buying food ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend.
Women, men and children lost their lives. Ordinary people going about an ordinary Friday.
They hadn’t gone to war. War had come to them.
Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s own account records the terrible loss of life and the lasting suffering caused by that single bomb.
The same terrible truth would return during the Second World War, when bombing and shelling again claimed civilian lives along our coast.
We remember those who went away to fight.
We must never forget those who died at home.
The wars didn’t end in 1945
For many families, the end of the Second World War was a moment of enormous relief.
But British servicemen and women continued to be sent into danger.
Korea. Malaya. Cyprus. Northern Ireland. The Falklands. The Gulf War. Bosnia. Kosovo. Iraq. Afghanistan.
Different wars. Different generations.
The same dreadful message arriving at someone’s home.
A son had been killed. A husband wasn’t coming back. A daughter, brother, sister or friend was gone.
Hythe’s War Memorial recognises this continuing sacrifice. Alongside those killed in the two world wars, it remembers people who died in later conflicts.
Their lives mattered every bit as much as those lost in 1914 or 1939.
A Gurkha who never saw his family again
The connection between Folkestone, Shorncliffe and the Gurkhas remains an important part of our military history.
He was travelling in a military vehicle when an explosive device struck it.
Krishnabahadur was an experienced soldier, respected by the men he commanded.
But he was also a husband and the father of two daughters.
One of his fellow soldiers, Corporal Yogendra Rai, spoke movingly about how much the Army would miss him.
Yet he recognised that the greatest loss was being suffered by his wife and two girls.
They hadn’t lost a commander.
They’d lost a husband and father.
Their father would never watch them grow up, celebrate their achievements or share the ordinary moments of family life.
There is no medal that can replace those moments.
Those whose names we may never read
Even the memorials cannot tell every story.
The Friends of Old Folkestone Cemetery have researched First World War airmen with local connections whose names, they report, are missing from Folkestone’s civic memorial.
