REGULAR readers of this page will know that Huddersfield people have made their way into every small corner of the world.

Sometimes, their stories come home, even if the travellers don’t.

In June this year,Tom Jowett of Blackpool, a contact point for the wartime survivors of HMS Exeter, told us he had been contacted by Federico Olascuaga, a researcher and professor of history in Maldonado, about 160km east of Uruguay’s capital Montevideo.

Federico has been studying the local graveyard and its silent stories, and contacted Tom with details of a gravestone in Maldonado’s cemetery with the name of Ivor Bower.

“Between us worked out that Ivor was born September 19, 1896, lived in Huddersfield, and served in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Exeter, dying of a brain haemorrhage in 1934,” said Tom.

Ivor Bower was a Chief Engine Room Artificer. He survived naval service in the First World War.

He died following a cerebral haemorrhage while in service and was buried where the Exeter was visiting at the time, the small port of Maldonado.

The same headstone commemorates Albert Dixon, who served on the HMS Norfolk, which was visiting the same port at the same time.

As a result of the June 22 article in Family History, Maureen Toms, Ivor Bower’s granddaughter, contacted Tom Jowett, who was able to put her in touch with Federico in Uruguay.

Maureen takes up the story:

“To my mind, my grandfather’s wife Gwendoline Bower, nee Briggs, also of Huddersfield, deserves a mention.

“She is very much the unsung hero of this story.

“Within a week of being told of her husband’s death in 1936, she had to vacate her Navy house in Portsmouth with no help of any sort.

“She returned to Huddersfield with her two sons, aged 13 and 15, to build a new life from scratch.

“I have great admiration for the way she achieved this, despite the sorrow she suffered during the Second World War.

“Both sons served in the RAF but her younger son, Tom Duncan, was killed in a flying accident in Canada in 1942.

“Her elder son, Douglas, my father, was shot down over Germany in October 1943 and it was some time before she knew that he had survived and was in a POW camp.”