William Lewington
Private 2973
4th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment.
Division 29
Private W. Lewington was twenty years of age (a report in the Reading Standard 14th November 1914 states 19 years). He died, in Maidenhead hospital, after a short but painful illness according to the report. The caption of the photograph states that this was blood poisoning. William Lewington was in training at the time. An article in the Reading Chronicle 15th January 1915, quoted on the next page, stated that a beam had fallen on his hip.
William was the second adopted son of Mr W.J.Giles of 68 London Street, Reading. As “Wilton the Magician” William was a favourite performer at local amateur and benefit concerts.
He was given a military funeral and his burial was the first of the WW1 burials. He shares his grave with his cousin.
Francis James Lewington
Rifleman 11397
1st Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps.
Francis James Lewington was an ex-employee of the “Chronicle” and then served in the regular army going to France with the BEF in August 1914. He was wounded in the left shoulder whilst fighting at Ypres early in January 1915 and invalided home with the bullet wound. A letter about his experiences around and was published in the Chronicle on January 15th 1915 in which he outlined his experiences.
“ I went out on August 12, and one of the first sights I saw was a church burning at Ladmark. [sic] (Langemark authors note) For 21 days we were in trenches at Soissons, but we made a charge, on which occasion I received a bullet wound before going very far. It was a clean-cut wound. I had a good time on board the hospital ship coming home. The bullet was not extracted for a week, when it was removed by a sister at Tidworth.
“On September 13 our brigade captured about 300 Germans. They surrendered under the white flag, but while those in front were surrendering, they were fired on by their fellow countrymen behind, the latter making off.
“While we were in trenches near Super (?) a sad fate befell a company of Cameronians. They were in a cave, but the Germans shelled it, and buried nearly the whole of them. For several nights afterwards their comrades were removing dead bodies.
“The 1st Berks have fought splendidly.
“We take a great deal of interest in football, and I was very pleased with Reading’s run.
The article also refers to the death of his cousin William Lewington, and that he had two more cousins at the front with 2nd Royal Berks.; they had previously served in India.
On Nov. 13th 1916 he was wounded in the back and ultimately died at Leeds on Dec. 13th 1916. A newspaper of the time when reporting his death states – ” The blow is all the more severe to his mother by the fact that he wrote cheerfully home the day before he died to say that an operation to extricate several bullets from the region of his spine was successful. A change for the worse, however, soon became apparent, and death occurred within a few hours”.
Francis James Lewington was 21and the only son of Mrs Lewington His was a full military funeral attended by members of his family and regiment, a Bugler played “The Last Post”.
