12 local men lost their lives on 23rd July 1916, nine of them whilst serving with the 14th (1st Birmingham) Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1st Birmingham Pals), and one from the 15th Battalion (2nd Birmingham Pals).
21st July 1916
Two local men lost their lives on 21st July 1916 – 23-year-old Private Dick Neale, 14th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and 19-year-old Second Lieutenant Rowland Murray Wilson-Browne, 12th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, who was an old boy of Solihull School.
14th July 1916
Private Victor George Houghton, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, was killed in action on 14th July 1916, serving with the 1st/7th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was born in Hockley Heath in 1897, and was the third of the four children (three sons, one daughter) of John (a shoemaker) and Ruth Elizabeth (née Waters) who had married in 1892.
Continue reading “14th July 1916”10th July 1916
Private Philip Salt, 8th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, was killed in action on 10th July 1916. Born in Handsworth in 1890, he was the only child of parents John (a coachman, born in Upton Warren, Worcestershire) and Eliza Jane (born in Dunley, Worcestershire), who had married in 1889.
By 1901, the family had moved to Bentley Heath, moving to Copt Heath by 1911. Philip became a gardener, and was living at Umberslade in 1911. His service record appears not to have survived but his medal index card indicates that he entered a Theatre of War (France) on 26th August 1915, so it’s known that he was a volunteer, not a conscript.
Philip Salt was initially posted as missing, and the Birmingham Weekly Post of 30th September 1916 carried an appeal by his father for further information. His body was never found, and his name is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial. He is also commemorated locally on war memorials at Solihull and Knowle.
Tragically, his mother, Eliza, was killed in February 1925 when a tree fell on her during a gale where the winds reached 78 miles per hour. His father, John, continued to live in Copt Heath and, by the time the 1939 Register was taken on 29th September 1939, he was aged 79, living alone in Jacobean Lane, with his occupation listed as retired groom. He died later that year.
If you have any further information about Philip Salt or his family, please let us know.
Tracey Williams
Heritage & Local Studies Librarian
email: heritage@solihull.gov.uk
tel.: 0121 704 6977
6th July 1916
40-year-old Private James Stephen Wrench, of Bentley Heath died of fever in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) on 6th July 1916. He was born in Leamington Spa in 1875, where his father, James, worked as a cabinet maker. James Stephen Wrench had moved to Knowle by March 1900 when he married Louisa Gibbs at the parish church. By 1911, the couple were living in Bentley Heath. Their only child, May Louisa Wrench, was born in 1900 and lived in the local area until her death in 1973.
5th July 1916
Private Walter Charles Taylor of “C” Company, 7th Battalion, the South Lancashire Regiment died on 5th July 1916. He was recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as being 18 years old, although his service record gives his age on enlistment on 23rd April 1915 as 19 years and three days. It seems that he lied about his age as, although 18-year-olds could enlist, soldiers couldn’t serve overseas until they had reached the age of 19.
1st July 1916 – Knowle etc
Ten local men with a connection to the area around Balsall Common, Knowle and, Dorridge died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916:
- Second Lieutenant John Balkwill, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Jermyn Brand, General List (attached 101st Trench Mortar Battery)
- Private Thomas Cooper, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Captain Cyril Thomas Morris Davies, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Private Walter Jennings, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Nicholl Kennard MC, West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own)
- Captain Stratford Walter Ludlow, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Captain Cyril Thomas Morris Davies, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Private Alfred Mutlow, North Staffordshire Regiment
- Private George Arthur Smitten, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
- Captain Willingham Franklin Gell Wiseman, Lincolnshire Regiment
Three of the men – John Balkwill, Thomas Cooper, and Stratford Ludlow, are commemorated in a stained glass window in the Soldiers’ Chapel at Knowle Parish Church, which was given in memory of Stratford Ludlow by his father, Brigadier-General Ludlow. It was dedicated by the Bishop of Birmingham on 5th June 1921.
12th June 1916
19-year-old Private John Henry Cooper died of wounds on 12th June 1916 whilst serving with the 1st/6th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment. A gas fitter by trade, he was born in Small Heath but spent part of his childhood in Knowle, where his parents lived from at least 1900 until at least 1903, and where his father, John, had been born.
4th June 1916
Four young men from the Solihull area lost their lives on 4th June 1916 whilst on active service in the First World War: Private Matthew Richard Barlow; Private Stanley Holt; Lance Corporal Austin Geoffrey Leigh (all serving with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment); and Second Lieutenant Philip Leslie Patterson, North Staffordshire Regiment. All four men were aged between 17 and 21.
31st May 1916
During the first day of the Battle of Jutland, 31st May 1916, three local men lost their lives in this great clash of 250 warships when the German Navy tried to break a naval blockade in the North Sea. The two days of the battle saw the loss of 25 ships and 8,500 men, three-quarters of whom were British. Despite the huge losses, the blockade held.
Lieutenant-Commander Leonard Hubert Lindner and Ordinary Telegraphist Elias William Wright were killed when their ship, H.M.S. Indefatigable, was sunk after being hit by shells from the German battlecruiser, Von Der Tann, which ripped a hole in Indefatigable’s hull, causing the ship’s magazine to explode and blow the ship in half. Only two of the 1,019 crew survived. According to one of the survivors, the ship’s Captain, C. F. Sowerby, survived the sinking but died of his wounds before he could be rescued.
On the same day Able Seaman Francis Smitten was killed in the same battle, when his ship, H.M.S. Black Prince, was sunk with all 37 officers and 820 men lost.
Solihull Life 