FIVE months into a historic community project project and Thame Remembers is exceeding expectations.

Organisers hope to place crosses on the graves of all 190 men from the town who have died in conflicts in the last 120 years.

The scheme began in August and the team of volunteers aimed to finish it by November 2018, 100 years after the First World War ended.

But 88 crosses, 46 per cent, have already been delivered or arranged, with 103 left to go.

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Thame men are buried as far away as Greece, Italy, Egypt, Iraq, Africa, India and New Zealand.

Organiser David Bretherton said: “I’m really surprised that we have already done nearly half, which is incredible. Some of the ones that we thought we would have real trouble with we have achieved relatively easily.

“Having got so far I just hope that we continue. It would be great to finish them all this year.”

He said: “It’s up to people coming forward and taking the crosses.”

More than 30 people who are travelling near an earmarked grave have volunteered to place a cross. They have been given a special two-bar cross, a recognised representation of the Holy Cross, which Thame chose as its emblem in the early years of the Second World War.

Mr Bretherton, a local councillor, said: “We did not expect this many people to get involved.

“We’ve been getting a lot of people saying they’re going to Brittany in France, but we need them in the northern areas.”

One of the most far-off graves visited so far is in the Dar es Salaam War Cemetery, Tanzania, Africa, at the grave of David John Burbridge. He died in 1917 from dysentery while serving as an acting Corporal attached to the 4th Light Armoured Battery at Dodoma during the First World War.

The Rev Hugh Prentice, from Australia, took the cross from Mr Bretherton while he was visiting Thame in October.

The Anglican minister and theological lecturer, who briefly lived in Thame in 2007, was travelling to Africa to celebrate the centenary of the St Philip’s Theological College in Kongwa, Tanzania, where he used to work.

Mr Bretherton, 67, said: “I was telling him about the project and he said that he was visiting Tanzania.

“He was leaving the next day. It was quite surreal, it was one of those moments where everything fell into place.”

Mr Prentice said: “David reckoned that our long association with Thame qualified us to carry the cross to Tanzania, for which he saw no other prospective carriers.

“We were confident we knew just where the Thame grave would be.

“But there are two Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in Dar es Salaam, and finding the other one proved difficult due to new buildings.

“However our enquiries eventually led us to it. There we placed the Thame Remembers cross on the grave of David John Burbridge.”

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