We followed up lunch in Oxford yesterday, to mark the birthday of a cousin, with a walk in the remarkable gardens of Worcester College.

Afterwards, heading out, I noticed the 1939–1945 War Memorial with, worryingly, as many as 92 names.  My post-prandial counting proving unreliable, I had to repeat the exercise twice—my excuse is the odd  triple-barrelled surname taking up most of an entire line and the incessant background chattering of my companions.

With chatterers in the chapel, the counting of names on the 1914–1918 memorial proved easier.  That’s grossly unfair on the chatterers, and is withdrawn apologetically, as here the names were in columns.  I made it 86.

In my experience of recording War Memorials, the WW2 count is usually not more than about one third of the WW1 toll.

What explains this?  In what theatre of war did they fall?  It seems to me almost like the toll of a Pals’ Battalion.

of Bomber Command bases does not show any bases near Oxford, most of the being in East Anglia and the East Midlands. I know RAF Moreton in Marsh was a training centre for Bomber Command, so I’m wondering whether its proximity drew a significant number from Worcester College.