Throughout the world there are numerous examples of individual burials that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has accepted responsibility for but relocation of the remains to a CWGC location is impractical. In the U.S. there are 356 such graves.

Nick Metcalfe MBE is a former British Army officer who is compiling data on all of the individual graves in the U.S. which are maintained by the CWGC. There are two of these here in Kansas.

One is 443382 Serjeant Leonard Clark Hargiss (January 8th, 1883 – June 23rd, 1920), 7th Canadian Machine Gun Corps. He is buried in Highland Park Cemetery, Pittsburg, KS. He was the son of Thomas and Nancy Hargiss, 707 W. 8th St.. He attended the Emporia Normal School in 1901. He was a ‘Physical Director’ who enlisted in the Canadian Army on August 28th, 1915 in Vernon, BC. He arrived in England on December 2nd, 1915 and served at the front until wounded and gassed in 1917.  He died of phthisis, an archaic term for pulmonary disease, probably due to gas exposure. He is commemorated on Page 550 of Canada’s First World War  Book of Remembrance.

The other is 58952 Private Lon Edward Jellsey , Northumberland Fusiliers ( June 9th, 1897-May  24th, 1921). He was originally buried in the Norwegian Cemetery, Morganville, Clay County but today his grave is in Morganville City Cemetery. He also died of phthisis. He was married to Bella Jellsey, of Beatrice, Nebraska.

If you have any additional information about either of these veterans Mr. Metcalfe would greatly appreciated hearing from you. Also he would like a photograph of each of the Kansas graves for his project (the Find-a-Grave shot of the Hargiss marker is of poor quality)   You can correspond with him directly through his website. Click here.

James (“Jim”) Patton BS BA MPA is a retired state official from Shawnee, Kansas and a frequent contributor to several WW1 e-publications, including "Roads to the Great War," "St. Mihiel Tripwire," "Over the Top" and "Medicine in the First World War." He has spent many hours walking the WW1 battlefields, and is also an authority on British regiments and a collector of their badges. An Army Engineer during the Vietnam War, he did work for the US World War 1 Centennial Commission and is affiliated with the WW1 Historical Association, the Western Front Association, the Salonika Campaign Society and the Gallipoli Association.