Private Raymond Ernest Pickford

The Brookwood Memorial stands in the large Brookwood Military Cemetery, which forms part of the London Necropolis at Brookwood, west of Woking, about 48 kilometres from London. The garden in which the Memorial stands is at the south end of the Canadian Section (Second World War) located on the far side of St. Lawrence Avenue, the highway leading in from the main entrance on the Pirbright road.

The memorial commemorates 3,475 men and women of the land forces of the British Commonwealth and Empire who died during the Second World War and whose names could not appropriately be recorded on any of the campaign memorials in the different theatres of war. There are names of men and women who served as special agents and died as prisoners or while working with Allied underground movements. A few of the names on the memorial commemorate those whose bodies were never recovered or those graves which could not, for some other reason, be marked and maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

The names of over 200 Canadians are remembered on the Brookwood Memorial. Some perished in ships that were sunken in waters outside the territorial limits of any major campaign; some were lost overboard; some died from various causes on hospital ships or troop transports and were given burial at sea. Also commemorated are those who died during the campaign in Norway in 1940, and in raids on enemy-occupied territory in Europe, including the costly operation against Dieppe in August 1942.