The Durham Chronicle 15/03/1940 reports:
The mysterious death of Samuel Burnell whose body was found in the River Lye in Belgium. He was serving with the British Expeditionary Force when he went missing. He was the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. J.S. Burnell of Long Row, Coxhoe. He enlisted when a youth of 17 and had been three years in the reserve when war broke out.
Burnell went to France in October and was to have been married to a sister in a London hospital on his first leave. Mrs. R. Herron, a married sister, living in The Grove, Coxhoe, said that she had received word that her brother was missing.
She had received a message from the War Office to say that he been drowned. She had no knowledge of further allegations that he had been murdered and thrown in the river and his body had been recovered in Belgium.
Samuel Burnell is remembered at Coxhoe on C103.01
