William Lewington & Francis James Lewington

William Lewington
Private 2973
4th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment.

Division 29

 W Lewington photo F Lewington Photo

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”.

Leslie Ernest Lindsay

Leslie Ernest Lindsay
Private 2488
9th Battalion East Surrey Regiment

Lindsay LE photo

Leslie Ernest Lindsay was the son of George and Mary A. Lindsay, of, 14 Palmer Park Avenue.  He died on the 26th September 1915, the second day of the battle of Loos, aged 19.  Prior to the war, according to the 1911 census, he had worked for the Co-op.  He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial Panels 65 -67.  Specific details about the death of Leslie Lindsay are not known but a general account of the battle, particularly the second day, is set out below.

The 1915 BEF offensive in Artois was centred around Loos.  The Germans held the high ground and their second line of defence was well protected on the reverse slope.   They were well aware of the impending attack and their line was strengthened with well constructed concrete machine gun posts.  The German artillery tactic was to bombard the assembling British troops and to lay a barrier of fire across no man’s land once the attack had started.  Those men of the BEF who penetrated the barrier would be stopped by machine guns.  It was at Loos that the British first used chlorine gas in retaliation for the gas attack by the Germans outside Ypres in April 1915.  The discharge of gas hung around the battle field and even  drifted back into the British trenches, hindering rather than helping the advance.

Loos was to be the first testing ground of the “New Army”.  John Keegan in his book “The First World War” (page 218) describes the scene as the New Army 21st and 24th Divisions went into line on the morning of the 26th September and started their attack in early afternoon.

“….they moved forward in ten columns ‘each [of] about a thousand men, all advancing as if carrying out a parade-ground drill’.  The German defenders were astounded by the sight of an ‘entire front covered with the enemy’s infantry’.  They stood up, some even on the parapet of the trench, and fired triumphantly into the mass of men advancing across the open grassland.  The machine gunners had opened fire at 1,500 yards range.  Never had machine guns had such straight forward work to do …with barrels becoming hot and swimming in oil, they traversed to and fro along the enemy’s ranks; one machine gun alone fired 12,5000 rounds that afternoon.  The effect was devastating.  The enemy could be seen falling literally in hundreds, but they continued their march in good order and without interruption’ until they reached the unbroken wire of the Germans’ second position: Confronted by this impenetrable obstacle the survivors turned and began to retire.’

The survivors were a bare majority of those who had come forward.  Of the 15,000 infantry in the 21st and 24th Divisions, over 8,000 had been killed or wounded.  Their German enemies, nauseated by the spectacle of the ‘corpse field of Loos’, held their fire as the British turned in retreat, ‘so great was the feeling of compassion and mercy after such a victory’.”

Robert Ernest Ling

Robert Ernest  Ling
Driver 79361
103rd Battery Royal Field Artillery

Division 14

Ling RE photo

Robert Ernest Ling  was the son of Mrs L. Ling, (later Mrs Brown) of 18 Gower Street, Reading.  He is remembered on her grave.

Before the war he was employed by Mr. H. J. Blundell, grocer and confectioner of Oxford Road.  He was a member of the St. James Catholic Church and the Reading Catholic Club connected with it. He was 19 years old and the first member of the club to fall in battle.   The Rev. Father Kernan referred to his death in a Sunday service and while sympathising with his mother “in the great loss she had sustained, also congratulated her upon the fact that her son had died fighting for his country”. 

Robert Ling was killed on February 24th 1915.  When initially reported in the papers it was stated “somewhere in France”, but his commemoration on the family grave states killed at Ypres. He is buried in Ypres Town Cemetery Extension, Menin Gate. Grave I. F. 1.