Private John Marshall was killed in action on 30th April, serving with 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was born in Ettington, Stratford-upon-Avon in 1895 and was the youngest of the three sons of John Henry Marshall (a labourer) and his wife, Alice (née Mumford) who had married at Ettington on 25th July 1885. John Henry Marshall died in Ettington in 1933, aged 72. Tragically, his two youngest sons pre-deceased him.
25th April 1916
27-year-old Second Lieutenant Aubrey Herbert Bower Webster, 6th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment, was accidentally killed on 25th April 1916 when a bomb exploded prematurely whilst he was on a training course in France.
He was born in Dorridge on 25th June 1888, during the time that his father, Rev. John Webster, was curate there. He lived in Packwood as a boy and was educated at King’s School, Worcester, where his name appears on the roll of honour. His name is also included on the King’s School window in Worcester Cathedral Cloisters, as well as on a memorial plaque at St Andrew’s Church, Ombersley, Worcestershire and on the village war memorial. As far as we know, he isn’t commemorated on a memorial in the Solihull Borough.
25th January 1916
On 25th January 1916, two local men died as a result of their war service:
- Temporary Captain, John Harry Hartill, aged 52, General List
- Private William Lovegrove, aged 23, 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment
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.
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.
13th October 1915
Four local men lost their lives on 13th October 1915. They have no known grave and are commemorated on the Loos Memorial:
- Second Lieutenant Ostcliffe Harold Beaufort, North Staffordshire Regiment
- Private Donald Ewen, London Regiment (London Scottish)
- Private Joseph Frederick Harding, Gloucestershire Regiment
- Lieutenant (Temporary Captain) Harley Raymond Russell, Gloucestershire Regiment
5th October 1915
Frank Baulcombe was born in Kenilworth on 18th February 1891, the fourth child and eldest son of the ten children born to parents Frederick (an insurance agent, previously a confectioner and baker) born in Eastbourne, Sussex and Selina (née Clarke), born at Moreton Bagot, Warwickshire. The couple had married at Claverdon on 5th January 1886. Frederick was a widower – he had married his first wife, Mary Page, on 31st January 1882 in Kenilworth and their only child, Marian Bertha Baulcombe, was born in Leamington at the end of the year. Mary died in 1884, aged 28.
Frank, a gardener at Umberslade before the war, was killed in action at Neuve Chappelle on 5th October 1915, whilst serving as a Private with the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He was 24 years old.
4th October 1915
20-year-old Private Alfred Abel Hall, a former boy scout, was killed in action on 4th October 1915 whilst serving with the 1st Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment in France. He was born in Honiley, Warickshire in 1896 but had moved to Heronfield, Knowle by the time of the 1901 when he was four years old. The family was still at Heronfield in 1911 when 14-year-old Alfred Abel was recorded as a farm labourer.
28th September 1915
George Lindon was born in 1891 in Packwood, the only son of the four surviving children of Daniel, a farmer and gardener, and his wife, Charlotte Eliza (nee Hull). George became a gardener at Knowle Hall but joined the Army within a month of the outbreak of war. He was killed in action, aged 24, on 28th September 1915, serving as a Private with the 2nd Battalion The Buffs (East Kent Regiment).
30th August 1915
Harry Mitchell Harris and Sydney William Wootton, two men with a connection to Knowle and Castle Bromwich respectively, died on 30th August 1915 but we don’t know exact details of the local link in either case.
Solihull Life 