Francis was born in Lambeth in 1884 the son of Christopher who was employed as a butcher and his wife Lucy. The family had moved to Woodham Ferrers by 1906 when Lucy died at the age of thirty eight and she was buried at St Mary’s on 18th June that year. By 1911 Christopher, by now retired, was living alone at Gresham Villa near the railway station in what is now South Woodham Ferrers.
Although he was a resident of Woodham Ferrers Francis volunteered for the army and enlisted at Fulham and was posted to the 6th (Service) Battalion Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire Regiment) which had been raised in 1914 as part of Kitchener’s Second New Army.
The battalion, attached to the 58th Brigade, 19th (Western)) Division was sent to France and disembarked at Boulogne on 20th July 1915.
The battalion was ordered to attack enemy trenches at 06.30 on 25th September, having spent a very wet and uncomfortable night in the trench, in an engagement which became known as the Action of Pietre which was a diversionary engagement as part of the Battle of Loos.
The Battalion’s war diary states that gas and smoke candles were deployed and, indeed, the Battle of Loos was the first time that the British Army used chlorine gas in battle. Unfortunately the gas did not take effect and the men came under enfilading fire and were forced to withdraw. Chillingly, according to the war diary, due to the wet weather conditions it took another two days to retrieve the wounded from the battlefield but Francis was not one of them.
Tom Gibson’s history of the Regiment states “On the 21st, orders were received for the forthcoming Battle of Loos. On the evening of the 24th, we moved up into the reserve trenches, and on the 25th, at 5.15 a.m., received orders that a gas attack followed by an infantry attack would take place. Our Brigade was to attack the German trench by Rue d'Ouvent as soon as the Division at Givenchy signalled that they had been successful. Unfortunately, though they were at the start successful, they were forced back again and when the 9th Welsh and 9th Royal Welsh Fusiliers, supported by the 9th Cheshires and 6th Wiltshires, advanced, they were badly enfiladed and suffered very heavy casualties. The 6th Wiltshires fortunately only advanced one company, "D", but even then had 40 killed and 75 wounded”
Pietre is to the north of Neuve Chapelle and Loos is now a suburb of Lille in France.
Francis is remembered on the Loos Memorial, in Dud Corner Cemetery, which commemorates over 20,000 officers and men killed in the Loos area with no known grave of whom Francis was but one.
Francis’s medal records show that, in addition to the Victory and British War Medals, he was also awarded the 1914-15 Star. Sadly Christopher was to lose another son George in 1918 but I am sure that he was pleased to receive the £3-7s-3d owed to Francis and after a wait of four years the princely sum of £3-10-0 as a war gratuity.
His father Christopher died 3rd May 1923 aged 75 and still living in South Woodham Ferrers.