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  Fusilier Richard Singleton 14735688
6th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers
 Later transferred to the Royal Inniskillings. He was the son of William and
Marion Singleton.
A letter sent to his family from his commander,
stated that he was an voluntary stretcher duties, actually having rescued a
comrade from a knocked out tank, when he was killed from sniper fire.
 Richard died a few days before his 19th
birthday on the 24th February, 1945.
He is buried in Reichswald Cemetery, Cleves,
Germany, plot 51 Row C, Grave 15.
He
was the brother of James, who was for many years the Bickerstaffe church
organist.
Reichswald Forest War Cemetery
 The
large Reichswald Forest (Forst
Reichswald) lies in North Rhine Westphalia, between Cleves (Kleve) and Nijmegen
in nearby Netherlands. After the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, thousands
of soldiers’ and airmen’s
remains were brought in from
burial places in western Germany. Many of the soldiers
died in the hard-fought battles
of the Rhineland, others in fighting in the Reichswald itself, and yet others
during the crossing of the Rhine in March 1945. Among the soldiers’ graves is
that of Major General Thomas Rennie, killed by a mortar bomb which exploded on
his jeep. There are 4,000 airmen
in the cemetery, most of whom died in the years of the bombing offensive and
some in supporting the advance of the soldiers. They, like the soldiers, were
concentrated after the war.
This,
as mentioned elsewhere, is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery of the
1939—1945 War if only actual buried bodies, and not cremations, are included.
(If they are included, then El Alamein War Cemetery, Egypt, with 7,950, is
larger). The cemetery contains 6,400 British burials, 700
Canadians
(all airmen, except for one soldier —
Canadian
soldiers who died in the area were interred in Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery,
Netherlands) over 300
Australians,
130 New Zealand and 70 Polish—a total of over 7,600.
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