After i finished researching my two memorials I sat down to look at the data and come up with some conclusions.
1, Firstly I tried to work out the worst year of the war in this the two towns agreed, each memorial had in excess of 400 men named this was the percentage in which casualties were incured;
1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919+
Ashford 6.4% 14.5% 20.6% 24% 29% 5.4%
Sittingbourne/milton 8.65 14.45 16.9% 27.95 30.95 0.9%
1918 was the deadliest by far especially in the last half, I didn't expect this. 1914 could have been less deadly but especially in the case of Sittingbourne, there were many naval casualties as many Chatham ships were sunk full of reservists, ie Aboukir,Cressy, Hogue, Hawke,Pathfinder etc Kent being heavily naval many our Sittingbournes naval reservists were on the Cressey et al.
It would be interesting to see how these figures compare with a pals area who lost badly on the somme i feel that there would be no difference. Single events can affect figures ie 1st July, or locally for me the sinling of HMS Hythe with the Kent Fortress engineers aboard caused hundreds of deaths in Tonbridge alone.
I also wasn't quite prepared for the numbers of men serving in the commonwealth forces which was a surpise, ironically in the local papers two brothers were reported killed the same day, one with the Canadian Artillery and one with the Royal Artillery.
I also found when going through local papers that many men who weree killed were not on any local memorial either because the family didn't want to put them on it, or because there was no relative left to put there name forward. I conclude that the village memorial underestimates the losses by about 50%, also I went around all parishes in each town within the town boundry and found that there were many names entered on the local parish memorials that were not on the main memorials. Conversely spelling mistakes are a curse as some men got on the memorial twice, In sittingbourne Stoker Irvine is on as Ervine and Irvine. One man appears locally on 4 different village memorials, after researching I found that he was the postman and all of these villages were on his round!
There will be some names you will never find, especially Smiths ans Browns etc, but some names you come up with from soldiers died have no obvious connection with the town, I found that many were billetted in the town and were put on by the people they were billed with. Local dignitaries often put all of their relatives on there, also men who worked in the town but didn't live there are also represented in force. Ashford was a railway town and many men worked and dossed in lodgings here even though they had no obvious town connections. Many were ex army who were recalled in 1914 and these figure strongly on the memorial.
Strangely Sittingbourne and Ashford are 20 miles apart but three men appeared on both memorials, because they originated in one town and worked and lived in the other, just like me.
go on research your memorial, make these names less anonimous, anyone can do it.
REST IN PEACE YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN.