Private Fears

This is my 200th blip. I was planning to mark it with a self-portrait but a few days ago I realised that the 200th would fall on my birthday. Having been born at 11am on the 11th of November into a military family that can trace its service back to Trafalgar, I have always felt tied to this date in many ways.

The small village where I live lost 65 men in the first world war, including four from the same family. That was almost ten percent of the male population recorded in the 1911 census. In recent years I have traced and visited many of their graves and memorials across Flanders but today my photograph is from another Sussex village not far away.

11th November 1918, was the day the Great War ended, but it was also the day that hundreds of men were killed or wounded. One of those who died on the 11th was Private George Fears. George was an assistant thatcher by trade. He joined up at Lewes in February 1916. Initially a Driver in the Army Service Corps, he was transferred to the Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment in May 1917 and sailed for France in August. On 1st November 1918 he suffered gunshot wounds to the back and right forearm. Paralysed from the waist down and bleeding internally, George was moved from the West Riding Field Ambulance to the 30th Casualty Clearing Station and then on to the 6th General Hospital at Rouen. On 9th November he was shipped back to England and admitted to Southampton War Hospital. He died of his wounds in the evening of the 11th November aged 24. His body was returned, unaccompanied, by rail to Berwick Station. George Fears is buried near the north wall in the beautiful churchyard at Alciston. May he rest in peace.