BORN HULL 1899. SON OF ARTHUR & SUSANNAH (ANNIE) ELIZABETH WADDINGHAM, OF 66 BATCHELER STREET, HULL AND 15 WAKEFIELD STREET, HULL (CWGC ADDRESS). SON OF A NER RAILWAY RULLYMAN. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS, SERVED WITH THE 10TH EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. DIED IN BELGIUM, ON 28/10/1918, AGED 19. HE IS BURIED AT HARLEBEKE NEW BRITISH CEMETERY, YPRES. HIS GRAVE INSCRIPTION, READS, “HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE – EVER IN THOUGHT”
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE GEORGE WADDINGHAM 55019. Born in July 1899, George was the second of four children and eldest son of Arthur and Annie Waddingham of 15 Wakefield Street, Hull. He was killed in action on 28th October 1918 as The Pals held positions around Ootegham and were heavily bombarded by gas shells. George received a battlefield burial and was exhumed after the Armistice and moved to Harlebeke New British Cemetery; he was 19 years old. They could sense the war was coming to an end. They were deeper into Belgium now than any British soldier had been since the start of the war and the response from the liberated villages was described in the Battalion History:
“The frenzied throngs of people in the beflagged streets almost exactly fulfilled our 1914 dreams of how King Edward Street would look when we came home again. Ordered marching was impossible, women pressed flags and flowers upon us and when we were free to fraternise we found every house open to us. Food and drink of every kind were pressed upon men who, even when they realised what sacrifices were involved, found it very difficult to recompense their delighted hosts; and to crown it all, we slept in their best feather beds. Indeed they could not do enough for us to show their delight and gratitude at their deliverance from the Germans, who had occupied since the beginning of the war. The band came into its own again here and gave nightly performances, much to the enjoyment of the inhabitants.”
How impossible then to turn from this back to the trenches and to die 10 days later coughing up your own lungs. And spare a thought too for George’s parents. They would not have known of their son’s death until after the Armistice; they would have already started to believe he’d survived.
