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John Kipling died on Sept 27, 1915 in the Battle of Loos, weeks after arriving in France. His father, who had used his contacts to obtain an officer’s commission for him, spent much of his later life searching for the boy he called Jack, but died without knowing where he had been buried.

The CWGC conducted its own research in 1992 and erected the engraved headstone at St Mary’s cemetery honouring Lt John Kipling, 2nd Bn. Irish Guards. But in 2002, the historians Tonie and Valmai Holt published a book, My Boy Jack — the title of a poem written by Kipling that inspired a play in 1997 — claiming the location was impossible, leading to public calls for it to be re-examined.

The matter was referred to the Ministry of Defence and has been debated among interested members of the public ever since.

The arguments hinged partly on the rank of Kipling, who was officially a 2nd Lieutenant, while the soldier buried in the grave marked as his was a 1st Lieutenant.

The Holts argued that this proved that it could not be John Kipling buried in the grave. But Col Parker and Mrs Legg have published evidence that he was in fact promoted before death, and was likely to have been told in the field, with his insignia changed before it was announced in the London Gazette five months after a letter was posted.

From the evidence we have available, it can’t be anyone else

They claim military records show that Kipling had been paid a 1st Lieutenant’s salary for a month before his death. They have also argued that problems with the map reference for the burial site — which historians have used as evidence that the grave marked as Kipling’s was too far away from his last known location – were a mere clerical error, with an “H” accidentally substituted for a “G” in a grid reference.