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A soldier who swapped his identity with a dead Australian on a World War One battlefield had his name removed from the Wimblington War memorial.

Percy Bush Cox took on the identity of Earnest Durham after swopping uniform and tags during a battle at Flanders in 1918. After a brief spell in hospital to recover from his wounds he was dispatched to a different unit than Earnest had served in and after the War Percy found himself in Australia.

The Army Council sent the family a letter regretting that Percy was missing and must be presumed dead in 1919.

Percy returned to England in 1925 to Sawston in Cambridgeshire, married and searched for his family.

In 1943 he found his father and brother and visited the war memorial at Wimblington to see his name.

The local press photographed him, some years later after his wife died. He took on a cleaner who found the newspaper cutting and started to blackmail him. As his money and resistance dwindled he took a gun to the blackmailer Mrs Piper shooting her twice and then shot himself on 30 December 30 1952.

Location: Wimblington, March, Cambridgeshire PE15 0RA
Image: Percy Cox (1915)

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