Genealogical war memorials of Bournemouth’s fallen
Hill 60: May 1st, 1915
Introduction
Tales from the Front (37) tells the story of Edgar Frank Williams, a native of Victorian Bournemouth, who fought in the Great War. Private Williams, a motor mechanic, served with the First Battalion, Dorset Regiment. On May 1st, 1915, the teenager went missing in action on Hill 60, another plausible victim of the gas attack. Hill 60, though low and constructed from spoil, offered a valuable advantage to whichever side controlled it.
Tales from the Front (37): Background
Mixing bowl
As a migrant hub, Victorian Bournemouth witnessed marriages of people born in many different and distant places, most often rural settlements. The couple’s families would have lived in their villages for several generations, if not more. These communities remained static, introverted, and conservative. If they had stayed, these couples would have married partners from the same or perhaps an adjacent settlement. Williams’s paternal line went back several generations, working the land in Bishopstone, Wiltshire, near Salisbury. On his mother’s side, the family had a similar profile, living in Hordle, Hampshire, near Lymington. In Bournemouth, however, where they married, they plunged into a different environment: urban, varied, open. The constant influx of migrants brought new experiences, ideas, and traditions into the mixing bowl. Children born into this society might have had different ideas and perspectives from their parents, who still would have retained traces of their origins.
Motor mechanic
The males in the Williams family had worked for generations on Bishopstone’s land, tending sheep or ploughing the soil. His father continued that tradition by becoming a gardener, a job which supported him for life in Bournemouth. Williams, however, broke with tradition as befits a child born into an open, innovative society. His service record shows that he worked as a motor mechanic. This job required somebody willing to address far more complexity than agricultural labouring. Automobiles, a recent innovation, belonged to the future. His younger brother, Alfred, followed this initiative by becoming a printer’s machinist. Williams, however, still a teenager, may have wanted more adventure. He joined the Dorsets in April 1914, some months before the war started. He left his parents in Shelbourne Road and went to Flanders. Here, he suffered a scalp wound in early 1915, but returned in time to fall at Hill 60, perhaps gassed.
Tales from the Front (37): Hill 60
Green, yellow mist
‘It enveloped everything like a fog. You have seen the mist which forms and hangs over a stream in the country at sundown. It was like that, only greeny-yellow instead of white … It was a surprise when we saw it in the air, but when it rolled onto us, surprise is not the word to describe our feelings. The fumes were unbearable. The smell was bad enough, but it was impossible to keep the eyes open or to breathe. They hurt your throat and set up irritation in the nose … Those wounded the worst were soon suffocated, and it seemed to condense and cover everything with powder … we saw we could not live in it … I can’t get rid of the irritation in my stomach from the fumes. We little dreamt of the power of that sneaking, creeping fog-cloud till it wrapped us in its clutches.’
May 1st, 1915
Major Cowrie, officer commanding the First Dorsets, may have first heard of the gas around 19.15. Captain Hawkins, commanding D Company, telephoned the news. His position lay to the north-east of Hill 60, in the Zwarteleen salient. He saw gas coming his way as well as further over to his right. According to Sergeant Shephard’s diary, the telephone lines went down due to enemy shelling during the gas attack. At some point, Major Cowrie went up to the hill. There, he ‘found the deep and narrow trenches blocked with dead, with many others lying in terrible agony. It was a deplorable sight and one which no eyewitness can ever forget’. His description suggests that the Dorsets faced two problems: the gas and restricted movement. Standing men would have dropped prone in a matter of minutes, dead or dying. Private Edgar Frank Williams went into the record as missing.
Aftermath
Williams’s parents had no other children apart from his brother, Alfred. He disappears from documentary evidence found after 1921, but a man so-called lived in Bournemouth until the 1960s. According to the same census, their father had become unemployed after working for a hotel. Unemployment often appears in that census. They had visitors staying, so perhaps they took lodgers to increase their income. Their father lived until the 1930s, their mother into the next decade.
Sergeant Shephard felt disgruntled about serving on the front line for almost a month without real rest. He and the survivors would edge around Hill 60 for the next couple of days, looking for friends and comrades, dodging whizbangs and snipers’ bullets. Their mood alternated between depression and aggression. They no longer planned to take prisoners. Before long, the next episode of gas came over, on May 5th.
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (37) has explored the background, life, and military career of Edgar Frank Williams (1897-1915). Private Williams served with the First Dorsets. He had suffered a scalp wound a few weeks earlier. Along with many comrades and colleagues, he went missing in the fatal fog of a gas attack on May 1st, 1915, on Hill 60.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring the natives of Victorian Bournemouth who gave their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Blending social and military history with genealogical insight, it explores their roots, families, occupations, and the ultimate sacrifices they made for their country.
The posts weave genealogical data together with eyewitness accounts found in war diaries, contemporary press coverage, and official military histories. The series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes offset with live accounts of battlefield action.
Serving as a companion and continuation of Victorian Bournemouth, Tales from the Front forms part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.
References
For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). For War Diaries, go here. See also here. The featured picture shows an imagined scene—genealogical information based on available sources.
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