Category Archives: Mauritius

Commonwealth War Graves, Essex, Essex Regiment, Great War, Hertfordshire, history, illness, Lieutenant, Mauritius, Oxfordshire, photography, Second Lieutenant, Somerset, story, war, Wiltshire

Lieutenant Arthur Devas

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Lieutenant Arthur Devas

Arthur Edward Devas was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, on 29th July 1877. One of ten children, his parents were Reverend Arthur Devas and Louisa. Arthur Sr was chaplain at the County House of Correction, the prison a short walk away from the family home, over the Kennet and Avon Canal. The 1881 census showed the Devas’ were living to the south of the town centre, and were supported by three servants.

Arthur standing as a vicar’s son earned him an education. He was sent to the prestigious Haileybury College in Hertfordshire. When his father died in 1901, he felt a pull to see more of the world, and joined the army. Enlisting in the Essex Regiment in September 1902, he was taken on as a Second Lieutenant.

Promoted to the rank of full Lieutenant in January 1906, the next census, in 1911, recorded Arthur at the Warley Barracks in Billericay. When war broke out in August 1914, he was based in Mauritius: he remained there for the next five months, before his battalion – the 1st – were brought back to England.

Setting up camp in Banbury, Oxfordshire, the aim was to train the battalion in readiness for an assault in Gallipoli. For Lieutenant Devas, however, this was not to be. He had fallen ill on the journey back to Blighty and, having contracted typhoid, he was admitted to the 3rd Southern General Hospital in Oxford. He died at the hospital on 15th February 1915, at the age of 37 years old.

Louisa and some of her children had moved to Minehead, Somerset, after her husband’s death, and this is where Arthur Edward Devas’ body was brought for burial. He was laid to rest in the extensive Minehead Cemetery, to be reunited with his mother when she passed away some eighteen years later.

Commonwealth War Graves, Corporal, Great War, history, London, Mauritius, photography, Private, Royal Fusiliers, story, Sussex, unknown, war

Corporal Richard Cadenaci

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Corporal Richard Cadenaci

Richard Edward Cadenaci was born in Sutton, Surrey, in around 1886. His father, who was also called Richard Edward Cadenaci, was a house painter and, with his wife Maria, had thirteen or fourteen children, of whom Richard Jr was the middle one.

Documentation on the Cadenaci family is scarce. On 5th April 1896, when Richard Jr was 10, he and three siblings were baptised together.

By the turn of the century, the family were living on Merton High Street, in Wimbledon. Richard Sr and Maria were there with their youngest five children.

Richard Jr seemed keen on a life of adventure – the 1911 census lists him as a Private in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, and that he was based in Mauritius. His full military service records are not available, but it is likely that his term of service with the army was extended as war loomed.

Private Cadenaci was sent to France in January 1915 and, during his time in the Great War, he received the Victory and British Medals and the 1915 Star. At some point during the conflict he was transferred across to the Labour Corps, though the move came with a promotion to Corporal. Again, there is little further information about his service, but records suggest that he was discharged from the army – possibly through health reasons – on 20th September 1918.

Here, Richard’s trail goes cold. He died on 23rd March 1920, just eighteen months after the end of this military service, at the age of 32. There is no record of the cause of his passing and nothing to connect him to the town in which he was buried, Worthing, West Sussex.

It is possible that Corporal Cadenaci left the army for medical reasons, and his move out of London was for cleaner air, but this is only presumption on my part, and there is nothing to confirm this either way.

Richard Edward Cadenaci lies at rest in the Broadwater Cemetery in Worthing.