Edwards, Walter

BORN HULL 1898. ORIGINAL HULL PAL. SON OF WALTER & MARY ABOVE. BURIED AT SEA. COMMEMORATED ON THE CHATBY MEMORIAL.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE WALTER EDWARDS 11/282. Born in 1898, Walter was the third of five children to Walter and Mary Edwards of 7 Henry’s Terrace, Rodney Street, Hull. He was 5ft 1″ tall, with light green eyes and dark brown hair, weighing in at 107lbs. A Chemist’s Labourer before the war, Walter enlisted at City Hall on 7th September 1914 joining the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’; Hull Pals. After training in Hornsea, Beverley and Ripon throughout 1915, The Pals sailed for Egypt just before Christmas to help defend the Suez Canal from the Turks. They left Alexandria for the trenches of the Western Front in March 1916 sailing on the HMT City of Edinburgh. Walter never made it. His story is a sad one. The details of the Inquiry into his death are in his Military Records.
At 6pm on 6th March 1916, Walter was posted as a sentry on Ship’s Boat Guard by Corporal James Martin 11/343. Martin left Walter guarding the Stoke-Hold door on the starboard side of the ship. At 7pm he was on his rounds and recorded Walter as being in position and all being well. At 7.05pm Private Walter Wales 11/1360 sheltered with Walter in the doorway as the weather was heavy and it was a rough night. As Wales stepped out of the door he heard a cry behind him and Walter had disappeared. He had fallen down an Ash Hoist shaft into the Stoke-Hold below. Wales raised the alarm and the scene was attended by Lieutenant Irvine of the RAMC who found Walter alive but unconscious suffering from a fractured skull and severe scalp wound, he was taken to the hospital but never regained consciousness and died around 10.45pm. He was buried at sea at co-ordinates 42.26N-6.25E the following morning.
Walter is commemorated on the Chatby Memorial. There was no record of this incident on either the Brigade or the Battalion diary. Strange. Could it be that they discovered Walter had signed up underage? He is listed as 18 on his Attestment and Medical forms, yet he was 2 years younger, a boy of 16.
The Chatby Memorial commemorates the names of 1000 Commonwealth Servicemen who have no known grave but the sea.