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Name:
Nationality: Rank: Regiment: Age: Born : Date of Death: Additional information: Marital status : Schooling: Occupation: Cemetery : |
Lodge Raymond
British Second Lieutenant 2nd Bn. attd. 3rd Bn. South Lancashire Regiment 26 25 january 1889 , Liverpool 14 september 1915 Son of Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge, of Normanton House, Salisbury. Single Educated at Bedales School , Petersfield , Hampshire and in 1906 the University of Birmingham. Matriculated in Engineering but for some reason he doesn't appear in the alumni list After two years as an apprentice at Wolesley Cars Manufacturer he entered the service of his family Lodge Bros. Engineering. Birr Cross Roads Cemetery Plot II , Row D , Stone 5 |
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Military Footsteps
September 1914 15 march 1915 26 june 1915 16-20 juli 1915 9 september 1915 14 september 1915 |
Joined up while his parents were in Australia Detailed to the 3rd Bn. South Lancashire Regiment After basic training at Great Cosby and Scotland he proceeded to Flanders where he was transferred to the 2nd Bn. At the Front has Engineering education was put into good use at the construction of trenches and dugouts. His technical knowledge enabled him to adjust the efficiency of the weapons. He developed the undercarriage for machine guns to adapt it against aeroplanes Detached to Officers Machine Gun School On leave to England Commanded 'C' Coy. and accompanied , even , Lieutenant General Sir Herbert Plumer during his inspection of the Battalion. Occupied the frontline trenches when he received the order to withdraw as a German artillery barrage was eminent. He sent his men along the communication trench and followed them as last. At that moment he was deadly wounded by shell fire. It was apparent that the Germans saw the troop movement and immediatley opened fire. The reports mentioned that he was originally buried to the right of the Menin Road , just over the railway to Zonnebeke. (Close to Hellfire Corner) *His father Sir Oliver Lodge is remembered for his studies in psychical research and Spiritualism After his son, Raymond, was killed in World War I in 1915 he visited several mediums and wrote about the experience in a number of books, including the best-selling Raymond or Life and Death (1916). Lodge was a friend of Arthur Conan Doyle, who also lost a son in World War I and was a Spiritualist. Lodge was convinced that his son Raymond had communicated with him and the book is a description of his son's experiences in the spirit world On September 28, 1915, just two weeks after Raymond’s death, Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge had a table-tilting sitting with Mrs. Leonard, who was primarily a trance voice medium. As a test of identity, Sir Oliver asked Raymond for his nickname. Raymond correctly responded by correctly spelling out “Pat” with the table. Sir Oliver then asked him to name one of his five brothers. The table spelled out N-O-R-M-A- before Sir Oliver interrupted and commented that Raymond was confused. He told him to begin again. The name N-O-E-L was then spelled out, which was one of Raymond’s brothers. It was not until Sir Oliver later discussed this with his other sons that it began to make sense. His sons explained to him that “Norman” was a kind of general nickname used by Raymond when they played hockey together. He would shout: “Now then, Norman,” or other words of encouragement, to any of his five older brothers whom he wished to stimulate. Sir Oliver saw this as evidence against telepathy, since neither he nor Lady Lodge knew of the name. He also saw it as an indication that Raymond, who had discussed psychical research with him when he was alive, was attempting to provide veridical information by giving a name unknown to him and most certainly not known to Mrs. Leonard. Alec Lodge, one of Raymond’s older brothers, had an anonymous sitting with Mrs. Leonard and put his own test to Raymond, asking him about his favorite music. This was a trance voice sitting in which Feda, Mrs. Leonard’s spirit control, took over her body and spoke through her vocal cords. Alec noted that after he asked the question, he heard Feda ask Raymond, “An orange lady?” Still confused, Feda then told Alec that “he says something about an orange lady.” Alec felt that this was very evidential as “My Orange Girl” was the last song Raymond bought when “alive.” Raymond also mentioned “Irish Eyes,” another of his favorites. He further tried to get a third song through, but Feda could get only “M” and “A.” Lionel thought it might be “Ma Honey,” but at a later sitting at Mariemont, the Lodge estate, Raymond was asked what was meant by the letters M and A, and he was then able to clearly give the name “Maggie Magee,” a song unknown to anyone in the family except Norah, his sister, who was not present when the name came through. This was still another indication that mind reading, or telepathy, was not a factor in the communication. In still another test, Lionel Lodge, another brother, and Norah, his sister, drove from the Lodge home, near Birmingham, to London for a sitting with Mrs. Leonard. Knowing that his brother and sister were scheduled to meet with Mrs. Leonard at noon, Alec Lodge asked two other sisters, Honor and Rosalynde, to sit with him in the drawing room and focus on asking Raymond to get the word “Honolulu” through to Lionel and Norah during the sitting. Lionel and Norah knew nothing of this request. During the sitting, Raymond said something about Norah playing music. Norah replied that she could not. Feda, using Mrs. Leonard’s body, then whispered to the invisible Raymond (attention directed away from Lionel and Norah), “She can’t do what?” Upon getting a response from Raymond, Feda then said, “He wanted to know whether you could play Hulu – Honolulu. Well, can’t you try to? He is rolling with laughter.” On another occasion, Sir Oliver asked Raymond if he knew about “Mr. Jackson.” Feda struggled with understanding Raymond’s response, but she communicated: “Fine bird…put him on a pedestal.” This was especially evidential as Sir Oliver was certain that Mrs. Leonard did not know that Mr. Jackson was the name of Lady Lodge’s pet peacock, nor that he had died a week earlier and was in the process of being stuffed and mounted on a wooden pedestal. Still another evidential communication came when Raymond informed his mother that the memorial tablet which she had put up at St. George’s Church, Edgbaston, had his date of death as Wednesday, September 14, when in fact September 14 had been a Tuesday. Raymond said it didn’t bother him, but that he thought he should call her attention to it anyway. Other evidential information came through convincing the Lodges that they were indeed communicating with their deceased son. But there were also things communicated by Raymond that seemed absurd, such as when Raymond mentioned that cigars and whisky sodas could still be had on his side of the veil, although they weren’t enjoyed nearly as much and eventually not enjoyed at all. That statement became the subject of much humor around smoking rooms in England and subjected Sir Oliver to much ridicule by his peers in the scientific community. But Sir Oliver had already come to understand that so much of the afterlife is a thought world and that in the lower realms, spirits still live is something of a dream world, often not fully grasping that they have left the material world while still desiring earthly pleasures and partaking of them in their “dreams.” Raymond, Bob, Claude, Thomas, and Rolf – the five WWI victims whose stories are told in Dead Men Talking, all reported that they had not found themselves in some humdrum heaven or in an abyss of nothingness but rather in a world that seemed very much like the material world they had just left. There was initially some confusion as they awakened to their new reality, and there was a period of adjustment in which they were assisted by guides, sometimes relatives who had transitioned before them. All were surprised at the nature of the afterlife condition, saying it was nothing like they had expected. Probably the primary message from all was that the afterlife is made up of many realms, planes, or spheres, and that, upon physical death, we transition to the realm we have prepared ourselves for during the earth life. “He says he thinks he was lucky when he passed on because he had so many to meet him,” Feda relayed Raymond’s words in the early sittings. “That came, he knows now, through your (Sir Oliver) having been in with this thing for so long. He wants to impress this on those that you will be writing for; that it makes it so much easier for them if they and their friends know about it beforehand. It’s awful when they have passed over and won’t believe it for weeks – they just think they’re dreaming. And they won’t realize things at all sometimes. He doesn’t mind telling you now that, just at first, when he woke up, he felt a little depression. But it didn’t last long. He cast his eyes round, and soon he didn’t mind. But it was like finding yourself in a strange place, like a strange city, with people you hadn’t seen, or not seen for a long time.” |
Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge ( née Mary Marshall)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
writer of Sherlock Holmes friend of the family |
Bedales School
University of Birmingham |
