18th April 1915: On this day William Dymond died

On the 18th April 1915, Private 18364 William Dymond of the 1st Batallion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, was killed in action in Flanders. Apart from being the second man listed on the Stoke Climsland War Memorial to be killed in the conflict, there are a few other interesting personal details about him that are worthy of note.

Firstly, he was Australian by birth but more of that later. 

Secondly, he was less than truthful about his age when he enlisted at Bodmin. Born on 21st May 1897, he enlisted on 8th February 1915, some three months before he reached the formal legal recruitment age of 18. Underage enlistment was not uncommon as Recruiting Officers were paid for each man signed up and many turned a blind eye to younger volunteers. William must have added more than a few months on to his age as he was almost immediately shipped abroad, despite the rules at the time stating that no one under 19 years of age would be sent overseas to fight. In fact, his enlistment record quotes his age as 20.

Thirdly, he has the dubious distinction of being the youngest of those listed on the Stoke memorial.

William’s parents (William John Dymond and Mary Jane Stratton), both with local connections, had emigrated to Australia shortly after their marriage in 1888. They settled in Charters Towers in Queensland, a mining town booming at the time after the discovery of gold. It was there that William and two siblings were born. Sometime after 1905, William’s mother and her two sons, William and Ernest (a daughter had died in infancy) returned to the UK and settled initially in Launceston. It seems that William’s father remained in Charters Towers until his death in 1940.

At the time of his enlistment into the DCLI, William’s record describes him as ‘A farm labourer aged 20. Height 5’ 4 1/2". Weight 126 pounds. Chest 32 inches and 34 1/2 inches expanded.’ Just over two months later, he was killed during The Battle of Hill 60 south of Ypres in Flanders. Hill 60 was, in fact, a 60 metre high spoil heap made from the diggings of a cutting for a nearby railway. But, in the flatness of the area, this height gave it a strategic advantage and possession was bitterly contested,particularly in April and May 1915. The Batallion War Diary at the time does not record any direct engagement of the enemy and it is probable that William died during one of the many intense bombardments of the trenches by the German artillery. William’s final resting place is in the Aeroplane Cemetery, which is quite close to Hill 60.

To complete the story, Commonwealth War Grave Commission’s records suggest that he was first buried in a smaller, possibly isolated, cemetery and his exhumed remains reinterred on 2nd September 1919. This process was known as ‘concentration’ and allowed otherwise unmaintainable graves to be moved into established war grave cemeteries where the Commission could ensure proper commemoration.