GUNNER 781351 JOHN WILFRED TRAVIS, 'C' BATTERY, 174th BRIGADE ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY. KILLED IN ACTION 12th JANUARY 1918.

GUNNER 781351 JOHN WILFRED TRAVIS, 'C' BATTERY, 174th BRIGADE ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY. KILLED IN ACTION 12th JANUARY 1918.


Even during quiet times on The Western Front when there was no ongoing offensive the risk of sudden and violent death was always present for troops in the front line. It was on just such a day that the 174th brigade of the Royal Field Artillery were in position to the west of Ypres when they were subject to an enemy barrage. Four members of the brigade were killed including Gunner John Travis a 21 year old lad from Ilkley who died instantly.

John had lived in Ilkley for most of his life, although, he was born in the Holbeck district of Leeds. He was the youngest of 4 children born to John Travis, a cashier and his wife Margaret. who had moved to Ilkley just after his birth. In 1898 John's mother died at the age of just 35 and his father brought up his children in a terraced house at 18 Middleton Road.

Upon leaving school John obtained a position with Ilkley Urban District Council, working as an office boy and clerk at the gas works which were located on Lower Wellington Road (today the site of Booth's supermarket). Records about his war service are sparse but we know that in 1915 John went to nearby Otley to enlist into the 4th Brigade of the Territorial West Riding Royal Field Artillery. Before the war this had been made up of part-time soldiers from Ilkley and Otley but in 1914 it had been mobilised and had been sent to France. In the meantime John was sent to the Territorial Army Training School at Ripon to learn how to become a gunner. It was in early 1916 that he was posted overseas to what became the 246th Brigade Royal Field Artillery which was made up of men from this part of the old West Riding. At some stage he was transferred to the 174th Brigade, although, the reasons for this are unknown. It is possible that he was wounded and evacuated to Britain and upon his return to the front was not sent back to his old unit.

Today John Travis lies in the British Military Cemetery at Tyne Cot and is remembered with pride on our war memorial in Ilkley

(Photo taken from the Ilkley Free Press and is courtesy of James Cooper) thanks also to David Potter of Great War Forum for information about John's war service.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19

Image
PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9 th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8 th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19 The youngest son of John Allan-Black and his wife Claire, Hugh was born in the hamlet of Stone Gappe near Lothersdale in the Craven District on the 25 th May 1899. His father was a wool merchant whose father Charles Ingham Black was a noted Irish scholar and poet and formally the Vicar of Burley in Wharfedale. His mother Claire nee Delius was the sister of the famous conductor Frederick Delius of Bradford and who in 1935 would write his biography. When Hugh was very young the family moved to Victoria Avenue in Ilkley where he attended the grammar school. However, in 1914 the family left the town and moved to Castletown on the Isle of Man where Hugh attended King Williams College. Hugh left school in 1917 when he achieved the age of 18 and enlisted into the army. His health was not of the strongest and he appears to have suffered from a w
Read more

2nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28.

Image
2 nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15 th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13 th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28. On the morning of the of the 1 st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, one thousand men of the Leeds Pals awaited the signal to leave the relative safety of their trenches and advance towards the German trenches situated a few hundred yards away in the remains of the village of Serre. Days of heavy British shelling had reduced the landscape to a sea of craters and it was blithely assumed that the enemy wire and trenches had been obliterated. At 7.30am precisely whistles blew and the Pals climbed out of their trenches and began to fan out before starting their deliberate advance towards the German lines. But contrary to their expectations the enemy had not been subdued and instead rushed to man their firing lines and opened up a deadly hail of machine guns bullets. The Leeds men now moving forward in lines walked steadily
Read more

CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22.

Image
CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4 th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27 th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22. During the Summer of 1918 as the war on the Western Front progressed towards its conclusion there was no let up in the intensity of the fighting as the Allied armies drove against a faltering but still dangerous enemy. After the successes achieved by the Germans during their Spring Offensive the British slowly and steadily regained the ground that they had lost earlier in the year and were now poised to breach the fearsome defences of the Hindenburg Line. Even though the fighting now took place over the shattered battlefields of 1916 and 1917 fighting  was more mobile and success depended on speedy rather than meticulous planning; it was a type of warfare at which British Divisions seemed to excel. The 62 nd (West Riding) Division had only arrived in France in 1917 and was recruited largely from the old West Riding of Yorkshire. Its effi
Read more