Edward Parker Wilkinson Loved to Travel and Had the Money to Indulge

TO THE SEARING HEAT OF MESOPOTAMIA Edward Parker Wilkinson loved to travel and had After service at Portsmouth, Private Wilkinson the money to indulge his passion. boarded the hospital ship Kildonan Castle for the Mediterranean and then Mesopotamia. He came to Longparish in 1884 aged 13 when his father was appointed Vicar and later Rector. Promoted to Acting Sergeant, he served with At boarding school the 20th Base Field Ambulance Edward showed a in Basra, Amara and Baghdad, talent for music and tending the wounded and dying sang in the choir. of the bloody campaign against (Back row, fifth from the Turks. right.) In June 1917 Edward overstayed His fine tenor voice his leave in India saying he was and skill at the “undergoing dental treatment.” organ earned him a place at the Royal College of Music and later As a result he reverted to Private at the Guildhall School of Music. and assigned to the Deccan Military hospital in Poona. Back in Longparish he married Mary Jane Faithfull and settled at Eastfield House, Forton. Edward became involved with village life, producing the annual pantomime in By July 1918 he was back in the newly built village hall. Mesopotamia but four months later he was dead, succumbing to He often entertained with bronchial pneumonia. He was 47 years old. oratorios and concerts. Private Edward Parker Wilkinson was one of hundreds of British soldiers who died of Among his concerns as illness in the heat and dust of Mesopotamia. a parish councillor was renovating the Ashburn He was buried near where he died but in Rest, then known as “the 1962 his remains were moved to the new fountain”. Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Tehran, Iran. Among his possessions sent home to his widow Edward’s travels took him all over Europe. and her mother (left) was He recorded his progress with regular a sheaf of negatives and postcards home. His other passion was photographs – and a set of the Territorial Army and when war came broken dentures. Mary lived he was soon in uniform serving in the at Eastfield House until her Royal Army Medical Corps. death in 1941. LONGPARISH AT WAR LANOE HAWKER: ‘ATTACK EVERYTHING’ Lanoe George Hawker VC DSO was born Hawker’s at Homecroft across the road from the old luck ran Longparish Vicarage on New Year’s Eve 1890. out on November He spent his first ten 23, 1916. Ten years in the village. thousand His brother wrote feet above of how the two boys Bapaume played on the railway on the Somme, he met Manfred von Richtofen embankments and – the Red Baron. The two fighters circled each tobogganed down a other for thirty minutes, each trying to get on the snowy Southside Hill. other’s tail. Low on fuel, Hawker made a break for the British lines. A burst of fire from the Red Hawker was a quick learner, uttering his first words Baron’s faster Albatross fighter above( ) killed the at six months. He soon showed a curiosity about British pilot instantly. how things work and in the army devised a revolu- Hawker was 25. He was buried alongside tionary gun mounting and the wreckage of his aircraft. The cross an optical machine gun erected on his grave is seen below but sight (left) which allowed the site was obliterated as the war raged much greater accuracy. on. As a fighter pilot Hawker’s aggressive Richthofen (left) mounted Hawker’s “attack everything” ethos won him a DSO Lewis machine gun above the door of his in April 1915 for bombarding a zeppelin billet. The German ace himself was killed hangar with hand grenades. seventeen months later, probably hit by a bullet Three months later he earned the Victoria Cross for shooting fired from the ground. down two enemy aircraft over Ypres and forcing a third to the ground. In 1967 a stained glass window was installed in St. Nicholas’ Church, While on leave and wearing civilian clothes a white feather, the Longparish to honour Hawker. In symbol of cowardice, 2011 his old squadron commissioned was thrust into his a memorial which stands in the village of hand. The incident Ligny-Thilley, close to the crash site on appealed to Hawker’s the Somme. sense of irony and he kept it alongside his Soon after Hawker’s death, one of his VC – the symbol of fellow pilots described him as “a leader of courage. men who combined modesty with great courage and unselfishness”. Promoted to Major, he took command “HE DIED YOUNG AT THE HEIGHT of 24 Squadron RFC, flying DH2 fighters. His reputation grew as OF HIS GLORY AND HIS DEATH Britain’s first “air ace”, claiming seven victories. CAST A SHADOW FAR AND WIDE.” LONGPARISH AT WAR HE WITNESSED THE GARDENER OUR FIRST WHO DIED GAS ATTACK AT SEA Private Alfred William Locke The official grave of Officers’ Steward (2nd class) Cecil Percy Mills fought in the Battle of Loos in lies 30 metres beneath the English Channel off Dungeness. 1915, where Britain used gas for the first time. A thick cloud of Mills was the eldest of chlorine rolled over the German six children, the son of a trenches. Some drifted back railway worker. They lived towards the allied lines and shells at Meadow Farm Cottage, smashed several gas cylinders, opposite the turning to engulfing British troops. Upper Mill. Mills left his job as a gardener in November By the armistice 188,706 British gas casualties were recorded including 1915 and volunteered 8,109 dead. Well into the 1960s coroners often recorded gassing as a to join the Navy at cause of death. Portsmouth. Private Locke, who also fought at Neuve Chapelle, Ypres Mills was serving dinner aboard and Armentières was apparently unhurt although it is the destroyer HMS Gurkha on a unclear whether he caught a whiff of gas. stormy February night in 1917 when a German mine struck just in front At 43, Locke was an old soldier who had already “done of the forward funnel. The 900 ton his bit” by the time war was declared. warship was cut in two. Born in the village he joined the 3rd Battalion Rifle Brigade in January A survivor described how the officers’ mess was “cleared in about 1890, serving in India for the next eight years. twenty seconds” and in that short time the upper deck was almost awash. After a short spell at home Private Locke was posted Many crewmen were killed in the explosion to South Africa where and others were trapped below as the ship the second Boar War was went down. It was too late to launch life raging. He took part in the rafts so desperate sailors dived into the cold disastrous Battle of Colenso sea. Only six were rescued. Cecil Mills was and the relief of Ladysmith among the 75 who perished. He was 23. where more than 13,000 soldiers were besieged for Two days later a pro forma letter from the Admiralty arrived at 118 days. Meadow Farm Cottage informing the family that Mills was not on the list of survivors and “must be regarded as having lost his life”. He sailed for England in 1902 and was put on the reserve list, spending the next 12 years working as a builder’s labourer. He lived with his mother, Cecil Mills is the only man named on the Mary, at Home Rule Cottages, now renamed Park View Villas. Longparish memorial who has family still living in the village. They say that until the With the outbreak of war Locke was among day she died, his mother, Ann, refused to the first to be called back to the colours. Just accept that he had gone. over two years later he was discharged as “totally disabled for further service”. The Gurkha was extensively salvaged for scrap metal until she was declared a War Grave in 1988. Her stern Private Locke died at home on August 31, still stands eight metres proud of the seabed. 1917 of exhaustion and pyloric obstruction, a cancerous growth in his throat. He was 46 years old. The Andover Advertiser proclaimed: “His was a life well spent in his country’s service.” LONGPARISH AT WAR HE DIED TO SAVE HIS OFFICER Corporal William John Poore died a hero according Padre Father Gleeson later wrote to Bessie: “He to his comrades who fought with him in the mud of sacrificed his life by shielding his officer, Mr. Hewitt, the Western Front. from certain death.” He added: “He seems to have known almost that the deadly bullet was intended Poore was a regular soldier, a drummer with the 2nd for the officer and moving up close to the latter he Battalion Munster Rifles. But in battle received the bullet which struck him in the head”. his task was to abandon his drum and pick up his gun. Father Gleeson wrote that Poore’s He joined the army in 1909 aged death was “worthy 18. Based at Aldershot, it was an of the noble and easy journey home to Longparish to unselfish man he spend leave with his wife, Bessie. was”. Poore sailed from Southampton with his battalion nine days after A wooden cross was erected over Poore’s grave on the battlefield war was declared. Within a fortnight he was in action at Mons. but as the war moved on the grave was lost. With 54,000 others he is commemorated on the Menin Gate (above) at Ypres. By early November the Munsters were in the Before leaving for France Ypres Salient.

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