L/Cpl 51645 George Woodward Mercer

The 1901 Census finds the family living at 9 King Street, Prescot. His father is aged 37, employed as a watch wheel cutter, mother Helen is aged 35, and George W. is 5. His brother Archibald was born at the end of that year.

 

The 1911 Census finds the family visiting Albert and Ann Tinnion, at 32 Station Road, Prescot. Ann is the sister of his mother Helen, 45. His father is 46, and is a self-employed watchmaker/jeweller and shopkeeper, mother is aged 45. They have been married for 16 years and have had 2 children. George is 15, a junior clerk in an electrical cable works. His brother Archibald, 9, is found in the household of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Seddon, in Sims Cottages, The Holt, Rainhill, Lancashire.

He enlisted in St Helens in the Royal Army Medical Corps as Private 1532 of the 1st West Lancashire Field Ambulance.  This unit was part of the 29th Division, formed in late 1914. In March 1915 they were training near Warwick when they received orders to depart for Gallipoli. His medal card shows that George arrived overseas on 19th March 1915.  In late March they sailed via Malta and Alexandria and landed at Cape Helles on 25th April 1915. George was admitted to the Hospital ship Assaye on 21st September 1915.  After heavy fighting, the RAMC were the last forces to be evacuated on the 07th/08th January 1916, to Egypt. In March they sailed to Marseilles, and entrained for the Western Front, taking up positions east of Pont-Remy, southeast of Abbeville.  

George transferred to the 6th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Rifles) as Rifleman 4884, he embarked aboard the SS Princess Victoria from Folkestone-Boulogne on 15th July 1916 reaching the 24th Infantry Base Depot on 16th July and proceeded to 11th Entrenching Battalion on 02nd August 1916. He then proceeded to the 17th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment on the 05th August 1916 and was posted to the 17th Battalion on the 05th September 1916. 

It is not known when George was wounded, but he was in hospital at Wimereux when he died of his wounds on 12th June 1917, aged 21.

He now rests at Wimereux Communal Cemetery where his headstone bears the epitaph:

"I PASS BUT SHALL NOT DIE". 

This is a quote from the poem The Passing of Arthur by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

 

The cemetery, on the coast just north of Boulogne, is built on sandy soil; for this reason the gravestones are laid flat.

Wimereux was the headquarters of the Queen Mary's Army Auxilliary Corps during the First World War and in 1919 it became the General Headquarters of the British Army. From October 1914 onwards, Boulogne and Wimereux formed an important hospital centre and until June 1918, the medical units at Wimereux used the communal cemetery for burials, the south-eastern half having been set aside for Commonwealth graves, although a few burial were also made among the civilian graves. By June 1918, this half of the cemetery was filled, and subsequent burials from the hospitals at Wimereux were made in the new military cemetery at Terlincthun. During the Second World War, British Rear Headquarters moved from Boulogne to Wimereux for a few days in May 1940, prior to the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. Thereafter, Wimereux was in German hands and the German Naval Headquarters were situated on the northern side of the town. After D-Day, as Allied forces moved northwards, the town was shelled from Cap Griz-Nez, and was re-taken by the Canadian 1st Army on 22 September 1944. Wimereux Communal Cemetery contains 2,847, Commonwealth burials of the First World War, two of them unidentified. Buried among them is Lt.-Col. John McCrae, author of the poem "In Flanders Fields." There are also five French and a plot of 170 German war graves. The cemetery also contains 14 Second World War burials, six of them unidentified. The Commonwealth section was designed by Charles Holden.

 

George earned his three medals.

 

His father received George’s Army effects, including a War Gratuity of £13-10.

 

His parents, living at 188 Boundary Road, St. Helens, were awarded pension of 5/- a week from December 1917.  

His parents moved for a while to Moss Houses, Dechmont, near Uphall, West Lothian, and after that lived at 11 Birch Road, Huyton, near Liverpool.  

His father appears to have died in 1937, aged 72.

The Pension card has his mother's death date as 25^th July 1934, she was aged 67.

 

George is commemorated in St Helens on the following Memorials:

Pilkington Memorial

Ormskirk Street Congregational Memorial.