In the First World War section of St Peter and St Paul’s Churchyard in Aylesford, Kent, is a headstone dedicated to T4/174339 Private W Johnstone of the Royal Army Service Corps. Little other immediate information is apparent, and there are no military records available based on his service number.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website confirms that Private Johnstone transferred across to the 697th Agricultural Coy of the Labour Corps. He was given another service number – 440640 – and this allows access to a few more strands of his life.
Private Johnstone’s first name was William, and he had a dependent, Mrs CM Gunn, who lived at Moss Fall in Linwood, Paisley. The records, however, add a little more confusion to the story – Mrs Gunn is recorded as U/Wife and a guardian is also noted: Mrs Catherine McDree.
The waters are muddied further by the Army Register of Soldiers’ Effects. While this confirms that William had enlisted by the spring of 1918, it also highlights that his effects and war gratuity were not actually claimed.
With no date of birth for William, it is impossible to narrow down any further details of his early life: there are too many combinations of William and Catherine in the Paisley area to be able to identify them with any confidence.
The only thing that can be confirmed is that Private William Johnstone died from a combination of influenza and pneumonia on 5th November 1918, at the Preston Hall Military Hospital in Aylesford, Kent. He was buried in the nearby churchyard.
Henry Charles Dyer was born in January 1865 in the Devon town of Ivybridge. The oldest of five children, his parents were carpenter James and dressmaker Mary Dyer. When he left school, Henry found work as a cordwainer’s apprentice but, after James died in 1886, he sought out a career that would help support his mother.
Henry enlisted in the Army Service Corps on 10th July 1886 and, by the time of the next census was based at barracks in Woolwich, South London. His service records note that he was 5ft 4.5ins (1.64m) tall and weighed 124lbs (56.25kg). He had a dark hair, grey eyes and a dark complexion. He was also noted as having a tattoo of a cross on his left forearm.
Private Dyer served in the regiment on home soil for more than thirteen years, qualifying as a horse collar maker and saddler during this time and rising through the ranks. He was made a Driver in 1889, Corporal in 1895 and Staff Sergeant in October 1899.
Trouble was afoot on the other side of the world by this time and his promotion was linked to Henry being sent to South Africa. He was there for eighteen months, and was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal, as well as clasps for service at Tugela Heights, the Relief of Ladysmith, Laing’s Nek, Transvaal and Orange Free State.
Staff Sergeant Dyer went back to Britain in April 1901, where he remained for a further six years. On 4th July 1907, reached the end of his term of service and having completed 21 years with the Army Service Corps he returned to civilian life.
Henry moved back to Devon, moving back in with his mother and younger brother. Mary had remarried after James passed, but her second husband had also passed away, and so having two of her sons home would have been of comfort to her. The 1911 census records the family as living in three rooms of a house in Grenville Street, Plymouth. They shared the property with the Smith family, a husband, wife and two children. Henry was recorded as an army pensioner (saddler), while his brother Ernest was listed as being a watchmaker, while also in the army reserve.
War was on the horizon again, and, Henry was one of the first to step up when it was declared. He was 49 years old by this point, and so technically exempt from enlisting, but as an army life had served him well before, it must have seemed fit for him to serve King and Country once more.
Staff Sergeant Dyer’s new service records noted that he was formally employed as a saddler, and that he had put on 18lbs (8kg) since he initially signed up.
Henry was based firmly on home soil this time round, and while he was initially based in Aldershot, Hampshire, he seems to have been moved to barracks in Kent. He served for more than two and a half years, but his health seems to have been suffering by this point. At a medical on 24th July 1917, he was deemed to be no longer fit enough for war service and was discharged from the army.
It is likely that this discharge came while he was admitted to the Preston Hall Military Hospital in Aylesford. While Staff Sergeant Dyer’s earlier military service is fairly detailed, his later career is not. What is clear is that, four days after being discharged, he passed away. He was, by this time, 52 years of age.
A lack of funds may have prevented Mary from bringing her son home to Devon. Instead Henry Charles Dyer was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Peter and St Pauls Church in Aylesford, not far from the Kent hospital in which he passed.
Albert Edward Rumbelow was born in 1879 in Wycombe Marsh, Buckinghamshire. One of eleven children, his parents were Suffolk-born paper maker Philip Rumbelow and his wife, Jane.
Little information is available about Albert’s early life, although by the time of the 1901 census, he is recorded as being a Private in the Rifle Brigade. The family had moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent by this point, where his father was still continuing in the manufacture of paper.
Private Rumbelow’s military service is evidenced in later documents. He served with the 1st Battalion from 1895 to 1907, was awarded the South Africa medals for 1901 and 1902: he was also granted the clasp for his involvement in the defence of Ladysmith. He appears to have been wounded at this point, and was invalided out of full military service and placed on reserve.
In 1904, Albert was back in England, and living in London. That year he married Ellen Sillis, a cordwainer’s daughter from Norfolk. The couple set up home in Fulham, and went on to have five children: Abert Jr, Iris, Florence, Doris and Hilda.
By the time of the 1911 census, Albert was working at the local Public Hall, as a labourer, hall attendant and cleaner. The family were living at 9 Crabtree Lane in Fulham, sharing the property with the Fitzgerald family.
War was closing in on Europe by this point, and, once again, Albert stepped up to plat his part. He enlisted within days of conflict being declared, and within weeks had been given the rank of Corporal. His service records note that he was 5ft 10ins (1.78m) tall, weighed 156lbs (70.8kg), had brown hair and blue eyes. He was also recorded as having a tattoo of crossed rifles and a crown on his right forearm, and scared on his left calf, knee and eyebrow.
By the spring of 1915, Albert had been promoted again, to the rank of Serjeant. He was sent to France on 19th May, having been assigned to the 7th (Service) Battalion. Serjeant Rumbelow was involved at the Somme and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal “for conspicuous gallantry” on 3rd June 1916. “He exposed himself to machine-gun and rifle fire when going across the open to rescue a wounded man. Later he went under fire to fetch a stretcher.”
Serjeant Rumbelow appears to have been injured in the skirmish, and was invalided to the UK later that month. When he recovered he was posted again, this time to the 18th (London) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade.
The following February he made the transfer across to the Labour Corps, and by March 1917, Serjeant Rumbelow was back in France. In August he was promoted to Company Sergeant Major, but was invalided back to England with bronchitis in February 1918.
When he recovered Albert was assigned to the 364th Area Employment Coy. in Kent, and seems to have voluntarily taken a drop in rank – back to Serjeant – in doing so. His health was dogging him by this point and in the late summer of 1918, he was admitted to Preston Hall Military Hospital in Aylesford, suffering from VDH, or heart disease.
Sadly, the strain of his military service was to be his undoing. He passed away from the heart condition on 21st September 1918, at the age of 39 years of age.
Albert Edward Rumbelow was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Peter & St Paul’s Church in Aylesford, not far from the hospital where he had breathed his last.
Now widowed, Ellen was left with the unenviable task of raising five young children on her own. She married again, to Private William Lake, on 8th June 1919, and the family moved to Essex. She lived until the age of 79, and was laid to rest in Sutton Road Cemetery in Southend.
Harold Wheeler was born on 22nd May 1898 in Gloucester. One of nine children, his parents were George and Emma Wheeler. George, who worked as a telegraphist and clerk for the Post Office, was from Rugby, but by the time he and his Swansea-born wife has their second child, they had settled down in Gloucestershire.
There is tragically little information on Harold’s life and it is impossible to know what he did between leaving school and enlisting in the army. War broke out in 1914, and, while too young at the time, he had joined up by early 1917.
Private Wheeler was assigned to the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment. Based in Kent, he was billeted in Maidstone. The only other record available for him is that of his passing. He had been admitted to the Military Hospital in Aylesford, and died, through causes unknown on 24th June 1917. He had just turned 19 years of age.
Harold Wheeler was laid to rest in the graveyard of the nearby St Peter’s & St Paul’s Church in the Kent village where he had passed.
Henry Evans was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, in the summer of 1883. Little concrete information remains about his early life, but it is clear that he was boarding with a dock labourer and his family in the town by the time of the 1901 census.
Henry married Margaret Jane Garner in Pontypridd on 14th March 1909. Within a couple of years, the young couple had moved to Llangollen in Denbighshire, and had had two children, Horace and Emlyn. Henry was now working as a saddler.
War was coming to Europe and, in November 1915, Henry enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps. His previous trade saw him well, as he was assigned to the regiment’s 1st Company with the rank of Saddler. His service records show that he was 5ft 8.5ins (1.74m) tall, had no distinctive marks, and that his was Wesleyan in his beliefs.
After a few weeks on home soil, Saddler Evans was sent to the Western Front, arriving there just before Christmas 1915. For the next year, he worked in France, returning to Britain 366 days after he left for the continent. By this point, however, his health seems to have been suffering, and it was to prove to be the beginning of the end for him.
Saddler Evans was suffering from transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. Symptoms can be wide-ranging, but in Henry they were severe enough to be viewed as a permanent ailment. At the end of May 1917, while admitted to the Queen Alexandra Hospital on Millbank, London, he was recommended for immediate military discharge.
Unfortunately, as is often the way with bureaucracy, the discharge papers went missing. In July 1917, Henry was moved to the Croesnewydd Hospital in Wrexham, and is was here, a month later, that his documents caught up with him. Saddler Evans was finally discharged from military service on 4th August 1917.
Sadly, his army status was not to have any kind of effect on his health: at 9:30am on 17th August Henry passed away while still admitted to the Wrexham hospital. He was just 34 years of age.
Brought back to Llangollen for burial, Henry Evans was laid to rest in a plot in the town’s Fron Cemetery. He was to be reunited with his family in time: Horace died in 1940, Margaret in 1956 and Emlyn in 1963, and all were laid to rest in the same grave.
Richard Levi Morris was born in the village of Carno, mid-Wales, in the autumn of 1895. He was the oldest of five children to John and Hannah Morris. John was a tailor who, when Richard was still a babe in arms, moved the family north to the Denbighshire town of Llangollen.
When he left school, Richard found work as baker’s apprentice. He was employed by the Model Bakery on Church Street, Llangollen, a business that would go on to win, according to its subsequent advertising, a bronze medal for both its white and brown bread in both 1912 and 1913 [North Wales Journal: Friday 7th August 1914].
War was coming to Europe, and Richard stepped up to play his part. Full details of his service are sadly lost to time, but he had enlisted in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry by the summer of 1918. Initially assigned to the 9th (Service) Battalion, Private Morris subsequently transferred to the 2nd/4th Battalion and was attached to one of the regiment’s depots.
What little documentation around Richard’s actual service confirms that he was sent to the Western Front. At some point towards the end of the conflict – possibly during the final advance in Picardy – he was wounded. Medically evacuated to Britain, he was admitted to a cottage hospital in Oswestry, Shropshire.
Sadly, it was here that Private Morris was to breath his last: he succumbed to his injuries on 18th January 1919, at the tender age of just 24 years old.
The body of Richard Levi Morris was brought back to Wales for burial. He was laid to rest in the quiet Fron Cemetery in Llangollen.
Norman David Roberts was born on 3rd November 1886 in the North Wales town of Llangollen. He was the youngest of three children to weaver John Roberts and his wife, Emma.
When he left school, Norman found work as a clerk on the railways and, by the time of the 1911 census, he had moved over the English border to Chester, and was boarding with an Emma Matheson.
The move to England may have spurred Norman on to other things. At some point after the census, he made the decision to seek a better life overseas. He emigrated to North America and settled in the town of Everett, to the north of Seattle. He continued his trade, however, and recorded himself as doing clerical work in transportation.
War was coming to Europe by this point and, in December 1917, Norman stood up to play his part. He made the crossing to Victoria, in the Canadian state of British Colombia, and enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
Private Roberts’ service records show that he was 5ft 11ins (1.80m) tall, had blue eyes, brown hair and a fair complexion. He had no distinguishing marks, but was recorded as having 20/20 vision. His religion was also recorded as Baptist/Congregationalist.
Norman was assigned to the 53rd Company of the Canadian Forestry Corps, and arrived back in Britain on 26th January 1918. Based in Shorncliffe, Kent, he was involved in felling and trimming trees and wood for the war effort.
Private Roberts was given a couple of periods of leave – five days in July 1918, and nine days in December that year. The latter leave was granted so that he could marry Claudia Griffiths back home in Wales.
While the Armistice had been declared, by January, Norman was back in Kent helping the post-war effort. Things were to take a turn, however, as he caught a severe cold, and a nagging cough. Unable to shake it, he grew progressively weaker and, over the next six months, lost 20lbs (9kg) in weight.
Admitted to the camp hospital in June 1919, Private Roberts was diagnosed with bronchitis. He was moved to another hospital in Orpington, Kent, where his diagnosis was upgraded to tuberculosis. Invalided back to Canada that August, within a matter of weeks he was medically discharged from service. His discharge papers noted that was weighed just 122lbs (55.3kg) and has a long flat chest with prominent clavicles. Norman’s once fair complexion was now dark (a combination of his work outside and his health).
Now out of the army, Norman made the journey back to North Wales, and settled in Llangollen with Claudia. The couple went on to have a daughter in 1920, but Norman’s health was deteriorating. He passed away at home on 23rd February 1921, at the age of 34 years old.
Norman David Roberts was laid to rest in Fron Cemetery in his home town of Llangollen. His was a family plot, and he was reunited with Claudia when she passed away.
Thomas Roberts was born in Llangollen, Denbighshire, in 1895. One of seven children, his parents were William and Ellen Roberts. William was a butter merchant, and his wife helped in the business.
When Thomas left school, he found work as a greengrocer’s assistant, but when war was declared he saw an opportunity for glory. While full details of his military service are no longer available, it’s clear that he enlisted in the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
Private Roberts was assigned to the 13th (Service) Battalion (1st North Wales) and on 1st December 1915, found himself in France. For the next eighteen months, he was firmly ensconced on the Western Front, and rose to the rank of Lance Corporal for his service.
In April 1917, Thomas was injured in fighting and was medically evacuated to Britain for treatment to his bullet wounds. Admitted to the Edmonton Military Hospital in North London, his injuries were to prove too severe. Lance Corporal Roberts passed away on 22nd April 1917. He was just 21 years of age.
Brought back to Wales for burial, Thomas Roberts was laid to rest in the family plot in Llangollen’s Fron Cemetery.
Thomas was buried along with his brother David, who had passed away in 1912. They were joined by their father William, who died in 1919, and their sister Elizabeth, who passed away in 1945. The family were finally reunited with Ellen, when she died in 1947, at the age of 86.
Benjamin Prytherch was born in the summer of 1887 in Cefn Mawr, to the east of Llangollen, Denbighshire. One of eight children, his parents were local blacksmith William and his wife, Diana. The family moved around a little while young Benjamin was growing up, but by 1901 had settled in Llangollen itself.
By the time of the 1901 census, Benjamin was the only one of the Prytherch siblings to still be living with his parents and was employed as a cabinet maker.
When war broke out, Benjamin was quick to enlist. He joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was assigned to the 1/4th (Denbighshire) Battalion. His service records show that he was 5ft 3.75ins (1.62m) tall and of good physical development.
While his battalion was part of the regiment’s Territorial Force, by February 1915, Private Prytherch found himself in France. He was caught up in the fighting almost immediately, and was injured during an explosion in a trench in May that year.
Sent to the No. 3 British General Hospital at Le Tréport in Normandy, Private Prytherch remained there for a little over a month to recover. However, when he returned to the front line, his health was impacted and he was unable to perform his duties without his breathing becoming affected. Further assessment revealed a heart murmur and he was sent back to Britain in July 1915.
Benjamin’s condition did not improve, and by October 1916, he was medically discharged as a direct result of the injuries he had sustained in the trench blast.
At this point, Benjamin’s trail goes cold. He returned home, but it is unclear whether he was able to work again. All that can be confirmed is that by October 1918 he had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. He died on the 23rd of that month in the town of Corwen, ten miles to the west of Llangollen. He may have been in respite care of some sort, as his parents were still living in Llangollen itself. He was just 31 years of age when he passed away.
Benjamin Prytherch was brought back to Llangollen for burial: he was laid to rest in what became the family plot in the town’s Fron Cemetery.
James Roberts was born in 1885 in Llangollen, Denbighshire. The youngest of three children, he was the son of Elias and Winifred Roberts. Elias was a builder’s labourer and, while James initially went into this line of work when he left school, by the time of the 1911 census, he was listed as being employed as a gamekeeper.
War broke out across Europe, and James was there to play his part for King and Country. Full details of his military service are not available, but he enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery, and was assigned to C Battery of the 161st Brigade. This was a Howitzer unit, and, as a Driver, James would have been involved in leading the horses pulling the cannons to where they needed to be.
There is no actual confirmation that James served overseas. He was, however, awarded the Victory and British Medals for his service. Driver Roberts survived the war, but again, details of what actually happened to him are lost to time.
What can be confirmed is that, by 1919, James had been admitted to the Wharncliffe War Hospital in Sheffield, and this is where, on 27th November that year, he passed away. He was just 34 years of age.
James Roberts was brought back to Llangollen for burial. He was laid to rest in the town’s Fron Cemetery.
Death and Service 