Corporal William Enos Smith from Solihull was killed in action on 1st September 1915, aged 29, serving with the 10th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

An insurance agent by profession, he appears to have had quite a difficult start in life. His father Robert Enos Smith, a brickmaker, died, aged 40, when William was just two years old. William’s mother, Emma, was left a widow with six children aged between one and 11. William was the fifth child and second son. Following her husband’s death, Emma seems to have taken in boarders at the family home in New Road in order to make ends meet. She died in 1903, aged 56, when William was 16 years old.

By 1911, William was living on his own, aged 24, in Warwick Road, Solihull. His Army service record seems not to have survived but it’s known that William first entered a Theatre of War on 18th July 1915, less than two months before he was killed. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial. His name is also recorded locally on the Solihull war memorial in the Square, Solihull.

An announcement of his death appeared in the Birmingham Daily Mail on 8th September 1915:

SMITH. – On the 1st inst., killed in action, Corporal William Enos Smith, 10th Royal Warwks, second son of the late Robert Enos Smith of the firm of Enos Smith and Sons, Brick Works, Solihull.

Corporal Norman Samuel Hurrell, serving with “C” Company, Warwickshire Yeomanry, died of wounds at sea on 23rd August 1915. The Warwickshire Yeomanry had landed at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, on 18th August 1915 and took part in the attack on Chocolate Hill, and Hill 112, on 21st August, so it seems likely that Corporal Hurrell was injured in this attack and was on board a hospital ship when he died of wounds he had received.

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Former railway clerk William Brough Berry Harrison died of wounds in France on 10th June 1915, aged 20, serving as a Corporal with the 1st/7th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

He was born on 17th October 1894, the third and youngest child of bricklayer’s labourer Leonard Lovelace Beverley Harrison (known as Beverley) and his wife, Emma (née West) who had married on 30th May 1886 at St Alphege Church, Solihull at which time the groom was aged 30 and the bride was 21. The newly-weds set up home at Elmdon Heath, where their two eldest children, Florette Annie and Alfred, were born in 1887 and 1889 respectively. At the time of Alfred’s baptism on 14th April 1889 the family was living at Lugtrout Lane, Catherine-de-Barnes.

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25-year-old Lance Corporal Abraham Rose died on 15th February 1915 whilst serving with the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. He was born in Langley Green, Oldbury in 1889, to parents John (born in Derby, a labourer at a brewery) and his second wife, Emma (née Salt). His first wife, also called Emma (née Jackson) died in Burton-on-Trent in 1875, seven years after her marriage to John at Marston on Dove in 1868. With three young children, John remarried soon after his wife’s death in 1875, and had moved with his family to Oldbury by 1881.

By 1901, Abraham was aged 12, recorded on the census as “adopted” and living in Oldbury with a John and Phoebe Rose. John was a 24-year-old bricklayer, born in Burton-on-Trent, and appears actually to have been Abraham’s brother. By 1911, John and Phoebe were living in Church Hill, Solihull but Abraham is not with them, and doesn’t appear to have been recorded on census returns elsewhere. It’s possible that he was a regular soldier and was away serving with the Army.

Continue reading “15th February 1915” →