Walter George Colchin was born in 1884 in Borden, Kent. His parents, Herbert and Frances, moved the family – three sons, including Walter, and a daughter – to the village of Iwade, where they ran the Woolpack Inn.
There isn’t a great deal of information about Walter’s life. He married Bertha Sparks from the neighbouring village of Milton in 1916.
Walter joined the war effort at some point after that – I have been unable to find an exact date – and enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps, before transferring to the Agricultural Company Labour Corps.
Private Colchin was on active service in Steyning, West Sussex, when the war came to a close. On 23rd December 1918, he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died. He was 34 years old.
Walter Colchin is buried in the graveyard of All Saints Church in his home village of Iwade.
Stuart William Arthur Mercer was born in February 1890, one of seven children to William and Eliza Mercer. The family lived in the village of Upchurch, Kent, where William worked as an agricultural labourer.
Stuart followed in his father’s footsteps, and by the time of the 1911 census, he and his brother Bert were working as fruit plantation labourers with William.
He married the delightfully named Elsie Lily Singyard who was also from Upchurch, in 1914, but the couple didn’t have any children.
It was not until towards the end of the Great War that Stuart signed up for service. He enlisted in the Royal Navy on 27th September 1918, and was assigned to the HMS Pembroke II training base in Chatham.
Stoker Mercer’s service was short, however; he had contracted bronchial pneumonia within weeks of the war ending and was admitted to the Royal Navy Hospital in Chatham. He passed away there on 28th November 1918. He was 28 years old.
Stoker Stuart Mercer lies at rest in the St Mary the Virgin churchyard in his home village, Upchurch in Kent.
Harry Austin was born in the small Kent village of Bobbing in 1890. One of nine children to Richard and Emma Austin, his father was the village blacksmith, a trade two of his brothers followed after leaving school. Harry, however, became a general labourer in the coal industry.
Sadly, most of Harry’s wartime service is lost to time; we know that he enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery and served as a driver. The RFA was responsible for the medium-calibre guns and howitzers deployed close to the front line; Harry’s role, therefore, was likely to have involved driving the horses to and from the sites where the guns were needed.
Again, Driver Austin’s military records are somewhat lacking when it comes to his passing. However, where they mark him as ‘dead from disease’, a contemporary newspaper in memoriam gives a little more detail.
In ever loving memory of Driver Harry Austin, RFA… who passed away November 10th 1918, in the 1st Southern General Hospital, Birmingham, from influenza following Gun Shot wounds, aged 29 years.
East Kent Gazette – Saturday 23rd November 1918.
An untimely death for Harry, but particularly poignant, given that he passed the day before the Armistice was signed.
Driver Harry Austin lies at peace in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s Church in his home village of Bobbing, Kent.
Walter Apps was born in 1896 in Kent. He was one of thirteen children to Richard Apps, a shepherd, and his wife Emeline. By the age of 14 he was listed as working on the farm the family lived on; his older brother Bertie was also helping out.
In February 1916 Walter was called up; his enlistment papers show he worked as a horseman, and that he joined the Royal East Kent Regiment (also known as the Buffs because of the colour of their tunic).
Private Apps was posted to the Western Front as part of the British Expeditionary Force in October 1916, and was soon transferred to the Royal West Kent Regiment.
He saw active service, and was wounded on 17th July 1917, receiving a gun shot wound to the face, which resulted in him losing the sight in his left eye.
Private Apps was repatriated on 8th August 1917, and remained there. He was discharged from the army as being no longer medically fit to serve at the beginning of the following March, but sadly passed away on 27th March 1918. He was just 22 years old.
Walter Apps lies at rest in the graveyard of St Bartholomew’s Church in Bobbing, Kent.
Albert Victor Stapleton was born in East London in 1893. One of five children to James and Mary Anne Stapleton, he lost his father when he was only eight years old. Mary Anne married again, and where her first husband has been a glass blower, her second, Edward, was a cooper/barrel-maker, and the family moved to Rainham in Kent.
Albert joined the armed forced early, enlisting in the Royal Engineers in December 1910 for a period of four years. When war was declared, this was extended for a further four years.
In 1915, Private Albert married Daisy, and they lived in the Rainham area. Over the next couple of years, he was promoted, joining the London Electrical Engineers and becoming Lance Corporal.
On 24th October 1918, just a couple of weeks before the end of the war, Albert was admitted to hospital in South London with influenza; while there, he developed pneumonia in the right lung. Lance Corporal Stapleton died on 2nd November 1918. He was 25 years old.
Lance Corporal Albert Victor Stapleton lies at rest in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin in the quiet village of Upchurch in Kent.
Tragically, just weeks after Albert’s death, Daisy gave birth to a son. Albert William Stapleton would never know his father.
Leonard Paul was born in Chesham, Hertfordshire. One of six children, he was the second son PC Harry Paul and his wife Mary Martha.
By the time of the 1901 census, Harry had been promoted and had moved his young family – William, Ivy, Leonard and Stuart – to Harmondsworth, where he worked as the Station Sergeant.
It’s clear than Leonard wanted to better himself, as in August 1908 he enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery. After training, he was posted overseas, arriving in India in March 1910. He is listed as a driver in the barracks at Ambala on the 1911 census.
When war broke out, his battalion was moved to the Western Front and he arrived in France in November 1914. Leonard was appointed a Shoeing Smith at the start of 1915, before being promoted to Farrier Serjeant later that year.
Serjeant Paul’s battallion, the 110th Brigade, fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war – Somme, Pozieres, Third Ypres – and it is almost certain that he was involved in this battles in some respect.
Leonard’s records show that he was admitted hospital in St Omer on 16th March 1917 with Trench Fever, before being invalided back to the UK a few weeks later.
Serjeant Paul was medically discharged from the RFA at the end of April; his release notes show that he was “physically unfit with tubercle of the lung”. His father having retired from the police force, his parents has moved to Kent by this point, and were living in Rainham, where Leonard joined them.
A contemporary newspaper picks up Serjeant Paul’s story from there.
The young man… joined the Army, and had served in France, where he was gassed. This undermined his health, and he fell into a decline, and after lingering for a year at home, died on Saturday [25th May 1918].
East Kent Gazette: Saturday 1st June 1918
A century on, the cause of Leonard’s lung affliction (a gas attack or trench fever) is neither here nor there. Either way, he suffered for a long time before finally succumbing. He was 29 years old.
Serjeant Leonard Paul lies at peace in the St Margaret’s Churchyard, Rainham.
Death and Service 