Campion, Walter

BORN HULL 1892. FIFTH SON OF SAMUEL GLOVER CAMPION (1854-1930) & MARY ANNIE OLIVER (1861-1925), LIVING AT 7 WALLER STREET AND 3 BALFOUR STREET, HOLDERNESS ROAD, HULL (WAR PENSION ADDRESSS). SON OF A FISH DEALER. ONE OF EIGHT CHILDREN, INCLUDING SIX SONS. THREE DIED IN THE WAR. THE BROTHERS WORKED ON THE HULL DOCKS AND RAILWAYS.WALTER WAS EMPLOYED AS A BUILDER’S LABOURER. HE ENLISTED IN HULL. JOINED THE 12TH EYR, HULL PALS WITH HIS BROTHERS, HAROLD, ERNEST, AND FRANK. SERVED IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. WOUNDED AT SERRE. DIED OF WOUNDS, ON 15/11/1916, AGED 24. UNMARRIED, HIS ARMY EFFECTS WERE LEFT TO HIS FATHER, SAM. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL, ON 09/1/1917, 13/11/1917 & 27/01/1917. HE IS BURIED AT: PORTE-DE-PARIS CEMETERY, CAMBRAI. HIS BROTHER, PTE, JOSEPH STANLEY CAMPION, 1ST/5TH NFUS, WAS KILLED THE PREVIOUS DAY ON 14/11/1916, AGED 20. HIS OTHER BROTHER, GUNNER, FRED CAMPION, 232636, RFA, WAS KILLED ON 21/10/1917, AGED 24.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE WALTER CAMPION 12/412. Born in January 1892 Walter was one of eight children to Samuel and Annie Campion of 3 Balfour Street, Holderness Road, Hull. A Labourer by trade he enlisted at City Hall on 19th September 1914 joining the 12th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, 3rd Hull Pals. One of the Originals he served first in Egypt and then in France.
He was wounded in May 1916 and evacuated to 29th CCS with shrapnel wounds to his back and left thigh, but returned to the line a few weeks later. The circumstances of his death were something of a mystery to the powers that be. He was listed as missing on the Somme during the attack on Serre in November 1916, but he fell prisoner to the Germans and although they informed the British authorities of his death from a gunshot wound to his back on the 15th, the postmark led them to believe he was still a POW in Germany in January 1917. Their mistake was clarified:
“The postmark ‘Wahn’ on the card is not to be understood to mean Campion was actually interned at that place. All correspondence from British Prisoners of War in hospitals in occupied territory is forwarded through Wahn which is a collecting station for such correspondence, and all letters and post-cards are stamped with the official post-mark of Wahn, and not that of the place where they were actually written.”
Walter was later discovered to have died of wounds at Cambrai and to have been buried in Porte-de-Paris Cemetery. He was 24 years old.