Every village that sent its sons and daughters to war was thankful when they returned home safely. But one tiny village in Suffolk was doubly thankful – every single soldier who left South Elmham St Michael for both world wars came home. STACIA BRIGGS visits one of only 14 villages in Britain which survived the wars intact.

%image(14970973, type="article-full", alt="St Michael South Elmham a rural community in North Suffolk which has the title " A Thankful Village" given to communities which lost no men in the Great War.The new plaque inside the church.Picture: James Bass")

It's a poignant jigsaw puzzle that has taken a century to piece together and which only now is being celebrated – this weekend, the 'doubly thankful' villages of Britain whose soldiers all came home from both world wars will receive plaques to commemorate a bittersweet victory.

With its sprawling and verdant village green and approach dotted with thatched cottages in a rainbow of muted pastel shades, South Elmham St Michael is one of seven South Elmham parishes in a delightfully rural area of north Suffolk that nestles between Bungay and Halesworth.

There is, however, a ubiquitous feature missing, one that stands in sad splendour in almost 16,000 villages across Britain: South Elmham St Michael has no war memorial. Instead, in the village church of St Michael's, there are two simple scrolls, two lists of fading names from two worldwide conflicts that shaped a generation: they do not list the men and women who paid the ultimate price for freedom, they list the sons and daughters of South Elmham who came back home.

%image(14970974, type="article-full", alt="St Michael South Elmham a rural community in North Suffolk which has the title " A Thankful Village" given to communities which lost no men in the Great War.The window of St Michaels Church which suffered no bomb damage despite some falling nearby.Picture: James Bass")

South Elmham St Michael is a rarity, a 'thankful village'. The term was coined by the writer Arthur Mee to describe the handful of communities which suffered no military fatalities in the First World War and was later expanded to 'doubly thankful villages', whose populations survived intact from both wars.

Research in 2010 discovered 52 civil parishes in England and Wales that had recorded no First World War casualties – there are two such parishes in Suffolk and none in Norfolk or Cambridgeshire – and just 14 so-called 'doubly thankful villages', among them, South Elmham St Michael.

While Culpho in Suffolk also gratefully saw the return of all its soldiers in 1918, the framed scrolls in St Michael's tell an incredible story that wasn't publically acknowledged for decades: while other villages display lists of their men who never came home, this tiny parish records the names of those that did.

Peter Potkins, Sidney Reynolds, E Smith, Edgar William Head, D Woodgate, George Forster, George Upson, Arthur Barber, Harry Baldry, Samuel Baldry and John Page all returned to South Elmham following the Great War. William Adams, Harry Aldous, Reginald Bray, George Taylor, William Taylor, Elsie Taylor and Monica Whatling fought in the Second World War and survived. As a scroll notes, in three powerful words, 'all returned safely'.

%image(14970975, type="article-full", alt="St Michael South Elmham a rural community in North Suffolk which has the title " A Thankful Village" given to communities which lost no men in the Great War.View of the main road through the parish.Picture: James Bass")

Whether by luck or the grace of God, the tiny Suffolk village that sent a fifth of its population to war welcomed everyone back.

But the good fortune wasn't celebrated: the proximity to neighbouring villages that suffered devastating losses meant that thankful villages were quietly grateful that they had sidestepped the statistics that had decimated other communities, fearful that any celebration could be misconstrued as gloating.

In the Great War, of the six million who left Britain to fight, one in eight never came home. In the Second World War, 400,000 were killed. In the face of such stark statistics, it is clear to see how fortunate the doubly thankful villages were, a fact that will be officially recognised this weekend as 14 communities receive plaques to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

The phrase 'all returned safely' is of particular significance to Dorothy Bloomfield, a churchwarden at St Michael's and the daughter of John Page, whose name is on the list of men who came back to the village after serving their time in the Great War.

%image(14970976, type="article-full", alt="St Michael South Elmham a rural community in North Suffolk which has the title " A Thankful Village" given to communities which lost no men in the Great War.The roll of honour for the Second World War inside the church.Picture: James Bass")

'My father was in the transport section of the Suffolk Regiment and was in charge of the mules. He never said much about the war, none of the men who came back did, but occasionally you'd get the odd story from him near Remembrance Sunday, when we would all wear poppies,' said Mrs Bloomfield.

'He might say something about the men he had left behind – you'd see the sadness in his eyes when he talked about how they'd suffered and what they went through.'

John Page was part of the little-known British campaign in Salonika where the initial objective was to help the Serbians in their fight against Bulgarian aggression.

'My father would talk about the mule he'd had in the war, Jack. He thought the world of that mule and said you couldn't have wished for a better animal because he was so sure-footed. Jack would be packed up to take supplies to the front line and the terrain was really rough and uneven,' said Mrs Bloomfield.

%image(14970977, type="article-full", alt="Dorothy Bloomfield's father, John Page who returned home safely from the First World War.")

'He'd worked with horses before the war and he had a real way with them. He'd talk to them and he'd never settle in the morning until he knew the horses' bellies were full. The old boys had a saying in later life: 'you can't talk to a tractor, but you can talk to a horse'.

'He'd tell us how brave Jack had been and how he had made it across the difficult ground. My father was invalided to Malta with Malaria and had to leave Jack behind. It must have been very hard for him because he had formed such a close bond with Jack – I never did find out what happened to him.'

Returning to Suffolk as a young man, John returned to work on the land as a horse man and married relatively late in life – Dorothy was born when he was 31.

'He was 78 when he died – a long time ago now, but I think of him very often, what he saw, what he did, how lucky we were that he came home,' said Mrs Bloomfield.

'It was a hard life – after the war he worked on the land and then during the Second World War we were bombed out in the early hours of one morning. My father raced to save the horses while my mother got us out of the house and saved what she could, which wasn't much.

'We lost our home and almost everything in it. I remember looking at what was left, but I didn't realise until later that it had been another lucky escape for the family.'

Along with her father, Mrs Bloomfield also has relations whose names are inscribed on the Second World War list of returning sons and daughters: Harry Aldous, who was in the merchant navy, George and William Taylor who were in the Royal Navy and their sister, Elsie, who worked in the operations room of frontline RAF stations.

'We are called a thankful village, but we still lived through the war in the same way that every other village across the country did, frightened for what was happening to loved ones, waiting for news. My poor grandmother, Edith Taylor, lived through a terrible time with all her children at war. My own son was in active service in Northern Ireland and Iraq and did a tour of duty in the Falklands so I know how it feels. You spend every moment on edge. Waiting. Hoping. Praying.'

Tomorrow, a simple slate plaque will be unveiled in 14 doubly thankful communities across Wales and England. St Michael's is positioned opposite the door, impossible for new visitors to miss.

Outside the church where Mrs Bloomfield, her mother and her daughter were all christened and married, her father's grave sits next to her husband Eric's and within sight of those belonging to her uncles and aunt. Marked with a simple urn and her father's name and nickname, 'Shiner', this is where Mrs Bloomfield's final resting place will be, too.

'I never really knew why my father was called Shiner, but he was always so happy. It doesn't worry me to think that one day I'll be here too, with my father and my husband, it is a peaceful feeling and a beautiful place to be,' she said.

How the region is marking the anniversary of the First World War – pages 14 & 15.