Remembered all over the world

From Doggy to Down Under, Jim Buddin turned his back on the Durham mines and left his girl behind. He wanted to begin a new life in Australia, to put down some roots in the romantic belief that she would travel around the world to join him one day.

He even located a little chapel where - maybe, perhaps - if he popped the question, they might tie the knot, and naturally from that would come...

But then the First World War intervened and shattered their dreams. It shattered Jim's body, too. He never made it home; he never tasted marriage; he never again saw his girl.

All the crushed hopes of Jim Buddin and Hannah Harling lie in a box in Shildon, a collection of his postcards home to West Cornforth.

Jim was part of an itinerant family. His father came from Surrey, his mother from Staffordshire, but they settled in West Cornforth - a Durham mining and iron-making village known locally as "Doggy" after an iron by-product - to raise their six children. Jim trained as a joiner, but got a job in a mine as a beltboy - separating coal from stones.

Through West Cornforth Methodist Church, Jim met Hannah, the daughter of a Thrislington Colliery miner who was big in the union and an elected representative on the county and district councils.

Jim, 26, and Hannah, 21, wanted a life together. A new life together. So Jim was despatched to the other end of the Earth to find it.

He sailed to Sydney, Australia, and settled to the south in the boomtime mining village of Corrimal, in New South Wales. Here he noticed a quaint chapel with jagged cliffs rising behind it. He sent a postcard home. "This is a view of Methodist Church Corrimal with Broken Nose in the distance," he wrote. "You will see it (the chapel) is a wooden one. They have the Endeavour Meetings and Sunday School in there, and Social Evenings sometimes." Although on the other side of the world, it sounds like the sort of chapel that a young lady from a God-fearing Methodist mining community might like to get married in and raise...

But it was not to be. It was 1914. War broke out.

Jim did not enlist at first - perhaps because mining was a protected industry; perhaps because he was still earning towards his dream. Patriotic recruiting marches wound their way through his district, drumming up numbers on their way to Sydney to sign up. Early in 1916, Jim joined them.

He became a sapper in the Australian Engineers, and the fighting dragged him homewards. As he travelled, so he sent postcards home. There's a picture of him on a camel in front of a sphinx in Egypt. Joyful news from the Somme was dated September 12, 1916: he'd met his younger brother Joseph for the first time since emigrating (11 days later poor Joseph was killed in action at Albert).

Arriving for Hannah's birthday on October 1 were wishes on a hand-embroidered card from the trenches, with "to my dear sweetheart" emblazoned across the front. Inside, Jim coyly suggested that she won't dare put this one in her album - perhaps she hadn't told her parents of their plans; perhaps she would have been embarrassed by her younger sister Annie sniggering over such an overt love message.

His 1916 Christmas card was written "on active service". "To greet you from France," he wrote. "My dear, dear girl, once again I have to wish you the old, old wish. May your Christmas be very happy and the New Year bring you all the best and brightest things that you can wish for."

It was not to be. The New Year brought the worst things they can have possibly imagined. There is just one letter in the box in Shildon. It is dated April 14, 1917. It was sent from No 6 General Hospital in France. How Hannah's hands must have shook when she opened it.

"I'm going on well now and quite comfortable or, at least, as comfortable as I can expect to be," opened Jim, calming his intended's nerves. He sidetracked onto the Easter parcel that the Harlings had sent, their pace eggs bemusing his Aussie mates. "Thank Annie for her contribution," he said. "I did not sample it but I came to the conclusion it was soap."

Back in Doggy, how they must have teased young Annie about her cooking.

But did the joke settle the nerves? For the letter then turned serious. "I was hit by a High Explosive shell and consider myself lucky to be writing to you," he wrote. "My wound is by no means a small one but it is a safe one so please do not worry about me in the least.

"I have a wound in the left side. It is practically on the buttock. It was a good job it was no higher up or it would have greatly upset Jimmie's internal arrangements.

"Now, dear, I can't write anymore so I must finish. Love to all and love to self. From you loving boy, Jim." He signed off with 12 kisses - his record.

And also his last penstrokes.

He had been wounded while digging a trench on April 9. After writing home on April 14, his condition deteriorated. On April 20, he was moved from the field hospital to Rouen Hospital. On April 21, he died. He is one of 8,654 casualties buried in the hospital cemetery.

He is remembered.

Hannah kept all of his cards home. She didn't marry until she was 39, her husband a 57-year-old widower with five children from Leeholme. Together they had one daughter, Margery Burton, who now lives in Shildon.

"It must have hit my mum so hard she couldn't talk about it," said Margery. "Although she had kept all his things, I only found them after she died.

"Reading the cards, you suspect he would have come back and they would have got married and her life would have been very different."

He is still remembered in West Cornforth. Yesterday, schoolchildren laid poppies on the war memorial which bears both the Buddin brothers' names.

Assisting in the ceremony was Andy Denholm. An environmental protection officer at Sedgefield Council, Andy was inspired several years ago to research the memorial's names when his young daughter asked whether the Buddins might be related.

He has put all the flesh on the bones of the Australian end of the story. He made contact with Corrimal and discovered that the quaint wooden chapel had been replaced by a modern brick affair, although the jagged rocks of Broken Nose still loomed above it.

He asked whether Corrimal had a war memorial. A local historian remembered there had been one. He remembered that it had had 21 names - one of which was a complete mystery with no story attached.

He re-discovered this roll of honour beneath the stage at the new Corrimal Methodist Chapel, and brought it out for Anzac Day, their Remembrance Day on April 25.

And the name which had been a mystery was found to be that of James Budden - misspelt, but his story now known. This year, for the first time in 87 years, he has been remembered at both ends of the Earth, from Doggy to Down Under.

* With many thanks to Andy Denholm