Musings from Higher Downgate and Elsewhere: On this day in 1918, Private Edward John Wills died.

Wednesday 24 October 2018

On this day in 1918, Private Edward John Wills died.

Private 240646

Edward John Wills

1^st/5^th Battalion

Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry

Died 24th October 1918

Aged 25

Edward John Wills, often known as John, was born in Stoke Climsland, in 1894, the only son of John and Betsy Anne Wills. He was baptised in the local church on the 6th May of that year. He seems to have had at least thirteen sisters. John was a copper miner and he and his family lived in Treovis Mill and Broadgate. John died in early 1901 and the census for that year records his widow living as a pauper with her son and six daughters at Treovis Mill. She remarried in 1909 to Francis Dawe, who was a general labourer, and lived at Luckett House, Luckett. We can assume that Edward John attended Luckett school and left to work as a general labourer, as he is listed in the 1911 census as having general work in fruit gardens.

Details of Edward’s military service are sparse. He seems to have had two service numbers, an early one of 2965 and the later one of 240646. This was not an unusual occurrence when a soldier changed regiments: whether or not this was the case with Edward is not known. He did enlist into the 1st/5th Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry at Bodmin but we do not know when or where he entered service overseas. We do know, however, that he was at the Front when his battalion became embroiled in the Battle of Estaires, an engagement in the Battle of the Lys (7th-29th April). This was part of the German Spring Offensive, originally planned with the objective of capturing Ypres and forcing the Allied Forces back to the Channel Ports and out of the war. Extracts from the History of the DCLI will put the involvement of Edward’s battalion into context: ‘Orders were received to take up a line east of Merville.......But the whole of the draft were youths without any experience of real warfare and the change practically from the barrack-square to the firing-line against a well-trained, war-bitten enemy was a terrible experience. Nevertheless these youngsters did very well, playing their part nobly in holding up the advance of the enemy and helping to rob him of victory’.

The 1/5th had put up a splendid fight over 11th-13th April but their losses were very heavy. No less than sixteen officers and 467 other ranks were killed, wounded or missing. Edward was one of the latter, not missing but wounded and captured by the Germans.

Limburg Prisoner of War camp

After the war, the belligerent countries involved provided lists of prisoners to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which created an index card for each prisoner and detainee. Edward Wills is one of these and his record card tells us what happened to him after his capture. He was taken at Merville on 12th April 1918 and had sustained a wound to the thigh. From the battle zone, he was transported to the Prisoner of War Camp at Limburg. Sometime thereafter he was transferred to the hospital at Munster Camp (Munsterlager) where he died of pneumonia on 24th October 1918. It is likely that he was buried, initially, somewhere close to the hospital. His final resting place is the Commonwealth War Graves area in the Hamburg Cemetery, closer to the city of Hamburg.

Edward Wills' headstone in the Hamburg Cemetery

During the First World War, Hamburg Cemetery was used for the burial of over 300 Allied servicemen who died as prisoners of war. In 1923, it was decided that the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died all over Germany should be brought together into four permanent cemeteries. Hamburg was one of those chosen, and bodies were brought into the cemetery from 120 burial grounds, including 130 from the Munster POW camp cemetery. Edward would have been amongst those transferred and reinterred in 1923. He is buried in Plot IV. C7.