BLOCKLEY, Wilfred (of Mansfield)

Wilfred Blockley's unusual memorial on the Old Meeting House, Mansfield

Letter from Edith Blockley to KRRC Depot Winchester enquiring about her son

...and will you be so kind to send me the address where he is in France...

Later letter from Edith Blockley requesting 'belongings and credit money dew [sic] to him, Who got killed in France'

And please send them as soon as posserable.

Wilfred Blockley on the Unitarian Roll of Honour

Kings Royal Rifle Corps

By Ralph Lloyd-Jones

Wilfred Blockley was born in Underwood in 1896, son of Edith and her miner husband William. By the time he volunteered to join the army (on 29th May 1915) in Mansfield he was himself a 19-year old miner. Slightly unusually he did not go straight to the Sherwood Foresters headquarters at Grantham, but was drafted instead into the King's Royal Rifle Corps and registered at their depot at Winchester.

He first went to France in October 1915, returning there on several occasions with Home postings and periods of leave in between. Although he served in various battalions of the KRRC he was in the (Lewis) Machine Gun Section of C Company, 18th Battalion at the time of his death in Belgium (probably in the Second Battle of Passchendaele/3rd Ypres) January 1917. He was wounded and taken to hospital, but died shortly afterwards on 27th. He is buried in the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Belgium. He is commemorated on the Unitarian War Memorial in Mansfield (with the 21 other Unitarians from the town who died in the War), and with a personal memorial on the wall of the nearby Old Meeting House. Unusually this is made from a piece of stone found in the ruins of the nearby Belgian town of Ypres (or Ypern), famous to the British as 'Wipers'.

Some correspondence from his bereaved mother at 21 Bancroft Lane, Mansfield has survived in his Service Record. This includes a pathetic list of his possessions that were returned to the family a few months after his death:

Correspondence

Photos

2 Religious Books

4 Christmas Cards

9 Split Rings (used to secure uniform buttons)

1 Spoon

1 Pr Scissors

1 Comb 1 Pencil

1 Reel of Cotton

1 Button

1 French Bullet

1 Gas Card

1 Empty Tin