Oliver Luther Hawkins
Second Lieutenant
3^rd Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment.

 Division 29

Oliver Luther Hawkins was the son of William Slade Hawkins and is commemorated on the family grave on the corner of the division next to the boundary wall.  He died of wounds during April 1915.  The date of death on the cemetery headstone is 23^rd April 1915, that of the CWGC register 26^th April 1915.  He was aged 22.

Oliver Hawkins is buried at Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery, North France. Location II.E.28.   Hazebrouck, is a town about 56 kilometres from Calais and is easily reached.  From October 1914 to September 1917 Casualty Clearing Stations were posted at Hazebrouck.   Although, from September 1917 to September 1918, enemy shelling rendered the town unsafe for hospitals.

It is likely that Oliver Hawkins had gone through the initial parts of the usual evacuation process of the wounded but succumbed to his injuries before reaching a base hospital.  The Second Battle of Ypres was taking place at the time of his death. 

The 1901 census indicates that the family lived at 97 London Road, his father was a private secretary. He had one sister and three brothers. The 1911 census indiates that he was a border in School House, Reading School.  At Reading School Oliver was a popular sportsman and gifted student.  He won the Lord Roberts prize and distinctions in cricket and football.  Oliver studied for a time at Marburg University, Germany and in 1913 went to Jesus College, Cambridge.   Whilst at Cambridge he joined the OTC and obtained a commission. The headstone of the family grave bears sad testimony to the early deaths of several family members.  His father died in November 1915. 

David James Davies
Second Lieutenant
Machine Gun Corps attached to “C” Battalion Tank Corps.

Division 13

David James Davies was the son of Mr Walter and Mrs Florence Esther Davies of 32. Market Place, Reading.  It was from that address that Walter Davies ran his shop selling china and glass. In 1911 David was 13 and still at school. HIs older sister Ester Madeline is described as working part time in the shop and part time as a student. David’s oldest sister Florence was not living with the family in 1911.  He was commemorated on a his family’s grave. 

 The Third Battle of Ypres began on 31^st July 1917.  A bombardment had begun fifteen days earlier and over four million shells had been fired.  (One million had been fired prior to the Battle of the Somme).  At 3.50a.m. the assaulting troops of the Second and Fifth Armies, with a portion of the French First Army lending support on the left, moved forward, accompanied by 136 tanks.  The Tank Corps was only four days old.  Previously it had been known as the Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps, a name adopted for purposes of secrecy at their formation.  Preparations for the battle had taken place in dry weather but on the first day the weather broke and three-quarters of an inch (21.7mm) of rain soaked the battlefield.  Men and tanks moved forward behind the creeping barrage over ground churned and cratered by years of shelling.  The surface was softened by the rain but, for all that only two tanks bogged down at the commencement of battle although many ditched later.  A map was prepared by Major Fuller, Staff Intelligence Officer of the Tanks, of the ground over which the tanks were expected to attack.   Where he expected the ground to be marshy, he coloured the area blue.  What he saw appalled him, it was three-quarters of the battlefield.  He sent the maps to Haig’s GHQ so that the Commander in Chief could judge conditions for himself.  However, the map was intercepted by Charteris who refused to show it to the Commander in Chief on the grounds that it would depress him.  Only 48% of the tanks reached their first objective.  Although there was some progress in the early part of the day by late morning the familiar breakdown in communications between infantry and guns occurred.  At two in the afternoon the Germans began to counter attack with a heavy shelling and this together with the heavy rain turned the battle field into soupy mud.  A halt to the offensive was called until the 4^th August.  However, Haig insisted that the attack had been “highly satisfactory and the losses slight”.  By comparison with the Somme, when 20,000 men had died on the opening day, only about 8,800 men were reported dead or missing.  The total wounded, including those of the French Army, numbered 35,000, the Germans suffered a similar number.  However, the Germans remained in command of the vital ground and committed none of their counter attack divisions.  Prince Rupprecht , in his diary recorded that he was “very satisfied with the results”.

 It is not known exactly when and where David James Davies was killed in command of his tank but it was struck by a shell on the opening day of the battle.  David Davies had no known grave and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Panel 56.  He was aged 20.