Frank Mitchell

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Grave/Memorial:  		Mitchell, Frank

8 February 1892, Brookwood, Woking, Surrey

George and Martha (née Holdforth)

19th Royal Hussars

7919

Private

3 March 1919, 44th Casualty Station, Germany, aged 27

Cologne Southern Cemetery, Cologne, Stadtkreis Köln, Nordrhein-
Westfalen, Germany; III. A. 25. 		   

Biography:
Frank Mitchell was born on 8 February 1892, in Brookwood, Surrey. He was the third son of George Francis, a farm carter, and
Martha (née Holdforth). He had three brothers and four sisters.

Frank was educated at Worplesdon school. After leaving school, he was employed at West Hill Golf Course.

Frank fought in France from August 1914, through to the Armistice, receiving only a slight head wound. He was with the 19th
Royal Hussars, the resident battalion occupying Cologne in 1919.

On 11 December 1918, 44th Casualty Station had moved to Cologne intended to set up in Kaiserin Augusta Schule but, on
inspection, the Maschinen Bauschule was found more suitable.

Frank Mitchell died on 3 March 1919 at 44th Casualty Station, Germany. Shortly after returning to Germany following three
weeks leave, he had influenza and developed bronchial pneumonia. He is buried, in grave III. A. 25, within Cologne Southern
Cemetery, Cologne, Germany.

The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer ‘Spanish flu’, was an exceptionally deadly global
influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. It is generally accepted to have caused 25–50 million deaths




More than 1,000 Allied prisoners and dozens of German servicemen were buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery
during the First World War. Commonwealth forces entered Cologne on 6 December 1918, less than a month after
the Armistice, and the city was occupied under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles until January 1926. During this
period, the cemetery was used by the occupying garrison.

In 1922, it was decided that the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died all over Germany should be
brought together into four permanent cemeteries at Kassel, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. Over the course of the
following year, graves were transferred to Cologne Southern Cemetery from over 180 different burial grounds in
Hanover, Hessen, the Rhine and Westphalia.

There are now almost 2,500 First World War servicemen buried or commemorated in the Commonwealth plots at Cologne. The Cologne Memorial, located inside the shelter building at the entrance to the Commonwealth plots, commemorates 25 British and Irish servicemen who died in Germany and who have no known grave.

Frank Mitchell is also commemorated on the memorial stone outside the Brookwood Memorial Hall..