Copyright Elizabeth Small

An extended family of Devon Gypsies – The Penfolds (c.1914)

Could the Flanders poppy be so ever red? Could the poppy bloom so ever red, Without the Gypsy blood shed there on Flanders fields? At the eleventh day, in the eleventh month kneel and pray. Are you sincere? The countless crosses, row by row, Mark the place where those that know are lying. How many then amongst those who fell, but given voices, stories could tell of mucker Gypsy? When Gorga*, Gypsy, side by side, comrades in arms, obscenely died, They were then brothers. They argued not the rightful place of this wandering Gypsy race. See not the horror, taste not the stench of rotting corpses in that trench But mark the Gypsy, tell me the difference. Point out which among that heap there in the ditch is Gypsy. When our men have died they are all the same. None can tell what pride or shame they felt in passing. So think about poppy blooms so red, whose colour marks the blood shed. So if this country did fall, Remember they’re equal, one and all. *Gorga is the Gypsy word for non-Gypsies (Author and date unknown)

Moses Small (Centre, back row) Like many Gypsies, Moses was an expert with horses. In 1900, his father had supplied horses to the British army fighting the Boer War in South Africa. Moses joined the army in the First World War. He trained to work with teams of horses to move huge artillery guns and shells. But he was soon found to be unfit for war service as he had once been badly injured … by a kick from a horse!

The stories of three Devon Gypsies killed or injured in the First World War Bob Broadway Fought in the trenches. Was killed in action in April His brother Jim, and a Romany friend, went looking for his body on the battlefield. When they found it they saw that someone had already cut off one of his fingers to steal a fine gold ring. They brought the body back for burial. Reuben Small Fought in the trenches but was badly wounded and left for dead. A friend (who was not a Gypsy) went back for him. He had four operations to remove broken bits of bone from his leg. He walked with a bad limp for the rest of his life Christopher Penfold Fought in the trenches in northern France with two of his brothers. He survived the war but died in 1925 at the age of 26 from injuries suffered in a gas attack. Very soon, another brother died in the same way.

The Cenotaph in London The Centotaph was b uilt in honour of the “unknown warrior”, an unidentified British soldier who had been killed in action. His body was buried in Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1920, two years after the Great War ended in order to symbolise the nation’s dead. Not many people would be think that that the unknown warrior just possibly might have been a Gypsy. Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons