THIS week we remember two men from Redditch who served in the First World War and who died 100 years ago.
Francis Edgar Wall was born in 1879 in Rowney Green to Charles and Elizabeth Wall of 68 Prospect Road, Redditch – a house which still stands today.
Prior to that the family had lived in nearby Arrow Road. He was the youngest of four children and his father was a needle filer and his mum a needle eyer.
With the outbreak of war he joined the Royal Navy as an able seaman and served on the destroyer HMS Laforey, named after Francis Laforey who commanded HMS Spartiate at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
By 1917 HMS Laforey, now part of the Dover Patrol, had seen action from the North Sea to Gallipoli in Turkey.
On March 23 she had been on escort duty shepherding merchant ships from Folkestone to Dieppe in northern France but on the return trip, at about 6.30pm, she struck a British mine.
There was an explosion amidships and the stern quickly sank, followed after a while by the bow. Only 18 of the 76 on board survived.
Francis is remembered at the Dover St James Cemetery and at the St Stephen’s war memorial in Redditch town centre.
Over on France meanwhile, the day before, March 22, Redditch soldier James Henry Sydney Laight died of wounds received after fierce fighting around the town of Peronne on the Somme front.
Little is known of James, only that he was 19 years old when he died, was living in Birmingham, and was serving with the 1st/8th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
The Germans had undertaken a strategic retreat to the Hindenburg Line, giving up more French territory (25 miles) than the Allies had won since September 1914 and leaving behind them a ‘scorched earth’ of devastation to delay the Allied advance.
Pte Laight’s unit captured Peronne on March 18 but bitter fighting continued as the Allies continued to advance up to the German defensive line.
He is remembered on the Astwood Bank war memorial.
With thanks to Remembering Redditch’s Fallen Heroes, Wikipedia and http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/
