John Edward WILSON

01 December 1916

WILSON – November 6th in France, Lance Corporal John E. Wilson, of the King’s Royal Rifles, only son of Mrs. I. Wilson, of Halsteads, Settle.

01 December 1916

ANOTHER SETTLE MAN KILLED

Mrs. I. Wilson, of 4, Halsteads, Settle, has received official information that her only son, Lance Corporal John E. Wilson, King’s Royal Rifles, has died of wounds received in action on November 6th. The deceased soldier was a certificated assistant master in the Edlington Boys’ Council School, Doncaster, prior to his enlistment on November 17th 1915. As a boy he attended the Settle National School, from which he gained a scholarship to the Giggleswick Grammar School, returning later to serve in his old school as pupil teacher. Upon the expiration of his apprenticeship he entered St. John’s Training College, York, as a student for two years, and gained his elementary school teachers’ certificate. For a short period he served as assistant master at Linton, Cambridgeshire, but returned to the West Riding at the earliest opportunity. The call to do something for his country appealed to him strongly, and he joined the King’s Royal Rifles, and was sent to Gidea Park in Essex. After a period of training he was promoted to Lance Corporal. Now he has answered a higher call and has made the supreme sacrifice for his country. Thus another promising career is cut short. He was a young man of upright character, with high ideals, and was respected by all who knew him. He was the grandson of Mr. John Wilson, the income tax collector, of Bishopdale Court, Settle, and formerly headmaster of the Settle National School, with which so much of the deceased soldier’s career was associated.

The Chaplain of the 12th Manchester Regiment, in a letter of condolence to Mrs. Wilson, said:– “I hope that before you receive this letter you will have had official news about your son, Rifleman J.E. Wilson. He died of wounds yesterday, and was dead before he was brought into the dressing station, where I am at present acting as chaplain (Church of England). I am afraid I cannot give you any particulars as to how he was wounded, but I spoke to a sergeant of his regiment about him and he spoke most highly of him. I buried him this afternoon in the soldiers’ cemetery near the dressing station, and I know that it will be a great comfort to you in your grief to know that he has been buried in a place where a cross will very soon be put up with his name on it. I cannot give you the name of the place, but if you write to the Director of Graves Registration and Enquiries, the War Office, Winchester House, St. James’s Square, London, in a few days they will give you all the information. You have my deepest sympathy, and I pray that God, our only strength and comfort in these dark days, will give you His peace that passeth all understanding. Your son has given his life in a great cause and we know that he has heard His great ‘Well done’.”

04 January 1918

SETTLE’S FALLEN HEROES

Memorial Service at the Parish Church

A memorial service for the Settle soldiers who have fallen in the war was held at the Parish Church last Sunday afternoon. There was a large congregation, and the service was conducted by Rev. W. E. Linney (vicar). The hymns ‘God of the living in Whose eyes,’ ‘Jesus lives,’ ‘On the resurrection morn,’ and ‘ O God our help in aged past’ were sung, and the ‘Last Post’ was sounded at the close of the service by two of the local Cadets. The organist (Mr. F. Lord) also played appropriate music as the congregation assembled and left the church.

The Vicar, in the course of his sermon, said they were met to remember the Settle soldiers, men, and boys – some indeed little more than boys – who had laid down their lives for the country at the war, whether during the year which was just drawing to a close or in the earlier stages of the conflict. When he asked them to remember those heroes that day, he knew that he was asking them to do what they were always doing. They were their own dear ones united to many of them by ties of blood – husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, as well as friends. How could they forget them? Were they not reminded of them day by day by the gaps in their home circles, which could never again be filled by them? They all desired in their hearts that God would bless and keep them, and give them peace. and happiness. The Vicar then read the following list of the Settle men who had laid down their lives:– John Edward Bell, Geo. S. Belles, Fredk. Baldwin, John Barrett, Robert Bateson, William Bradley, Frank Bulcock, George R. Bullock, Herbert Clark, John Cokell, Edward Ellershaw, Jas. Ewart, Wm. Ewart, Fredk. Frost, Harold Goss, Alfred Gower, Joseph Lord, John Morphet, John Packard, Chas. Peachey, Thomas Howarth Preston, Albert Ralph, Thos. Stackhouse, George Edward Turner, Derwent Turnbull, Wm. Troughton, Harry Walton, John Edward Wilson, Ernest Wooff, and Robert Wooff. Proceeding, the Vicar said they had a responsibility with regard to those men. They owed them a debt, and he trusted and believed that they were wishful to do all that they could to repay it. “ Our lives are being saved by their death. If we have any future before us on the earth it is because they gave up their futures to secure it. Their right to survive was as good as our own. Many of them would have been of far more use in the world than we can hope to be. The future stands to be only poorer for our surviving in their stead. We are debtors to them for all they have given us. To the future think of all it has lost in them.” How were they going to pay the debt, and in paying it to honour their heroic dead? Surely there could be but one answer – to live to give effect to their ideals. When they were asked what those ideals were, they might be well put in the words of Bishop Walshaw How’s hymn written for the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria, “To make the world a better world for man’s brief earthly dwelling.” If Prussian militarism should gain the ascendancy the world would be scarcely a fit place to live in. What they wanted was the triumph of right and liberty. That was the task they had begun, and many of them, fired by the enthusiasm of a noble cause, literally went singing to their death. The old life which had no loftier aim than a high standard of material comfort had been felt to be unsatisfactory. To ardent youth the higher spirit of self-sacrifice, which was the spirit of Christ, beckoned onward with irresistible attractiveness, and they followed the gleam. They had yet to complete the great task to which they dedicated themselves. That was the way they could honour the memory of their fallen heroes, and with confidence that they had not died in vain.

A collection taken on behalf of the Red Cross Society realised £5 15s.