Capturing, preserving and sharing Solihull's history. Also commemorating local casualties from the First World War #SolihullRemembers
Two local men lost their lives on active service on 29th September 1918 – 38-year-old Private Allan Hobbins, 4th Battalion, Canadian Machine Gun Corps, and 20-year-old Second Lieutenant Christopher Ernest Neale, 10th Battalion, attached 2nd Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment.
Three officers with a local connection lost their lives on active service on 27th September 1918 – Major Percival Charles Edwards DCM, 15th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment; Captain Edgar Godfrey Izon, 14th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment; and Lieutenant Maurice Jones, of the East Lancashire Regiment, attached to the 14th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. The 14th and 15th Warwicks were attacking African Trench on 27th September, the first day of the Battle of the Canal du Nord. The trench was 1500 yards west of the village of Gouzeaucourt.
21-year-old Signaller Frederick James Mellish died on 26th September 1918 whilst serving with the 297th Siege Battery Royal Garrison Artillery. He died at No. 3 Canadian General Hospital, Bolougne of bronchial pneumonia and wounds from a gas shell.
Continue reading “26th September 1918”Three local men lost their lives on 25th September 1918 – Second Lieutenant Clive Marston Beaufoy, 10th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment; Lieutenant Leonard Stopford Brooke, 110th Squadron, Royal Air Force; and Private John Simpson, 11th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment.
Corporal Thomas Samuel Carlisle Joiner died of influenza/pneumonia on 24th September 1918 at 79th General Hospital, Taranto, Italy whilst serving with the 8th Battalion Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry. According to the Solihull Parish Magazine October 1918, He was en route to England from Salonika after three years on active service.
35-year-old Private Edwin Guy Silk was killed in action on 20th September 1918 whilst serving with the 14th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Edwin was the youngest of the five known children of parents Edwin (a coal merchant) and Eleanor Maria (née Prosser) who had married in Coleshill in 1875. A sixth child had died in infancy.
Two men with a local connection lost their lives on 18th September 1918 whilst on active service – Private William Cleaver, 10th Battalion Notts and Derby (Sherwood Foresters) Regiment and Private William John Reynolds, B Company, 12th Battalion,, Hampshire Regiment.
Private Frank Barker, 10th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment died in Germany as a prisoner of war on 16th September 1918. The cause of death was given as “P.U.O.” (Pyrexia of unknown origin), which was usually the term given to trench fever – an unpleasant bacterial infection transmitted by body lice.
22-year-old Corporal David Jelfs, 26th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment was killed in action in the Balkans on 13th September 1918. Born in Bretforton, Honeybourne, Worcestershire in 1895, he was the third of the eight children (two sons, six daughters) of parents Harry (a stockman on a farm) and Matilda (née Gillett).
Two men with a local connection lost their lives on 12th September 1918 whilst on active service – Sergeant Allen Noel Birkett Barker, 66th Brigade HQ, Royal Garrison Artillery and Lance Corporal Philip West, 2nd/4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment.
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