Tag: First World War

24th February 1916

20-year-old Sergeant Alfred Rabone, the only son amongst the four children of parents Alfred Harry (who seems to have been known as Harry) and Jane Rabone, was killed in action on 24th February 1916, serving with the 10th Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

According to the 1901 census Alfred was born in Olton in 1896, although baptism records show that he was baptised at Knowle parish church, aged 3 months, at which time his parents were living in Chessetts Wood and his father was working as a brickmaker. Soldiers Died in the Great War, and the 1911 census, both give his place of birth as Knowle.

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21st February 1916

23-year-old Private Walter Tarver, a gardener by trade, was killed in action on 21st February at Etaples, France, serving with the 8th Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment. His older brother, Harry, a baker, was also killed on active service.

Walter was born in Cubbington, near Leamington Spa, in 1893, the second youngest of four sons born to parents Thomas and Elizabeth who lived in the village. Harry and Walter both joined up in September 1914 and both are listed as being old boys of Cubbington School. Walter is commemorated on the war memorial at Berkswell but we haven’t been able to find his connection with the village, although there has been speculation that perhaps he worked as a gardener at Berskwell Hall. His brother Harry is not listed on the Berkswell memorial.

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31st January 1916

Private Joseph Harrison, who died on 31st January 1916 serving as a Private with the 1st Battalion, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, was born in Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire in 1887. Apart from his war service, he seems to have lived in Baddesley Clinton for his whole life, as did many of his family, who seem to have had a long association with Baddesley Clinton Hall as servants.

On the 1891 census, all four of the live-in female servants (housekeeper, cook, housemaid and kitchen maid) were members of the Harrison family – the sister of Joseph’s father, and three of her nieces.

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21st January 1916

Lieutenant Robert Laurence Needham, known as Laurie, was killed in action in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) on 21st January 1916 during the Siege of Kut el Amara (the First Battle of Kut), 100 miles south of Baghdad.

Born in Brighton on 10th April 1889, Laurie and his younger brother, Frederic Gilbert (known as Gilbert), both attended Solihull School after boarding at a private school in Brighton.

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17th January 1916

Second Lieutenant Charles Hugh Davies died in France on 17th January 1916 after a piece of shrapnel pierced the roof of his dug-out and struck him on the head as he was sleeping. He was 28 years old and was serving with the 9th Battalion Welsh Regiment. Although born in Stoke Bishop, Bristol in June 1887, his father, Thomas Davidson Davies, was from Camarthenshire, Wales.

Charles was the eldest of the three sons of Thomas Davidson Davies (Chief Mathematical Master at Clifton College) and his wife, Elinor Lucy (née Thomas). His local connection to the Solihull area is that he was a boarder at Packwood Haugh School from 1899 until 1901 when he went on to Rugby School, winning a General Exhibition before he left in 1905. He went up to Magdalen College, Oxford with a Classical Demyship (scholarship).

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9th January 1916

On 9th January 1916, 43-year-old former builder’s labourer, Charles Day, died at the General Hospital in Alexandria, serving as a Private with the 9th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

He was born in Knowle in 1872 to parents John (an agricultural labourer) and Ann Day, and was the fifth of their six children to be born in the village 1864-1874. Ann had two older children from her first marriage to George Day, who was actually the older brother of her second husband. Ann and George married in 1855 at St Martin’s Church, Birmingham, but George died in 1860, aged 26. In 1864, Ann married his 21-year-old brother, John, at Knowle.

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6th January 1916

Second Lieutenant Guy Llewellyn Gwyther died on 6th January 1916 serving with the 2nd Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment. Born on 23rd July 1882 at Castle Bromwich, he was baptised at St Mary & St Margaret’s Church on 18th October 1882. He was the second youngest of the five children (four sons, one daughter) of parents Julian (a solicitor in Birmingham) and Dorothy Hannah (née Hughes). The two eldest children were born in Water Orton, whilst the other three were all born in Castle Bromwich. All four sons served in the First World War, with two of them – Guy and Philip – losing their lives. Their father, Julian, died in 1908 so was spared the knowledge of the death of two of his sons.

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29th December 1915

The last of the known casualties from places now within the Solihull Borough to die in 1915 died on 29th December 1915.

Eric Arthur Walker, who enlisted as a Private with the Warwickshire Yeomanry before being commissioned on 26th February 1915 as Second Lieutenant 9th Battalion (attached 6th Battalion) King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. He first entered a Theatre of War on 16th October 1915, just over two months before he died on 29th December, aged 20.

Corporal Archibald Haye Neill, 1st Garrison Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, died in Sudan and is buried in Khartoum Military Cemetery. His name was added to the Hampton-in-Arden War Memorial in 2015, 100 years after his death.

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