Pte 26012 Benjamin Whittaker

• Age: 20
• From: Walton, Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 18th Btn
• D.O.W Monday 2nd April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Cc Ext
  Panel Ref: II.E.21

Benjamin Whittaker was born in Walton on 17th March 1897 and baptised 12th April 1897. He was the son of Benjamin Whittaker and his wife Mary (nee Williams), who married in 1893, and was the third of their 10 children.

The 1901 Census shows the family are living at 67 Prescot Road, Liverpool. His father is 25 years of age, a corporation lamplighter born in Liverpool in 1876, whilst his mother Mary was also born in Liverpool in 1876. Benjamin junior is 4 years of age and has three siblings, all born in Liverpool, in the household; Emma aged 7, Charles aged 5 and Catherine aged 2. 

His brother Charles died in 1909 at the age of 13.

By 1911 the family have moved to 21 Zante Street, Kirkdale. Both parents are in the household, they have been married for 18 years and have had eight children of whom, seven have survived. Benjamin is now 14 and described as a page in a furniture warehouse, he has six siblings in the household; Emma 17, Catherine 12, Mary 8, Martha 6, Edith 4 and newborn Minnie.

Two more children were born after the census: William in 1913 and Elsie in 1914 (who lived for only two weeks). His eldest sister Emma died at the age of 21 in 1915.

He enlisted in Liverpool, in about January 1915, joining the 18th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 26012. He arrived in France after 31st December 1915 thus earning two medals.

Benjamin died of wounds, aged 20, on 02nd April 1917. His CWGC headstone shows his age as 19.  The CWGC Graves Registration forms show his date of death as 03rd April 1917 and his battalion the 18th, however the CWGC currently lists Benjamin as serving with the 13th Battalion.

The Battalion War Diary records that Private B. Whittaker was attached to 21st Machine Gun Company when he was killed.  The diary records him as Wounded on 2nd April; he apparently died that day from his wounds.

He was buried in Henin British Cemetery. After the war when graves were concentrated, his body was removed and reinterred in Henin Communal Cemetery Extension about 5 miles southwest of Arras where he now rests at plot II.E.21 where his headstone bears the epitaph:

"HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR"..

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 2 April 1917, lost in March 1918, after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on the following 24 August by the 52nd (Lowland) Division. The extension (designed by W H Cowlishaw) was made between April and November 1917, chiefly by the 21st and 30th Divisions. It was used for 15 burials at the end of August 1918 and enlarged after the Armistice when 68 graves were brought in from Henin British Cemetery. Henin Communal Cemetery Extension now contains 193 burials and commemorations of the First World War, 18 of which are unidentified, and special memorials commemorate two casualties buried in Henin British Cemetery whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

Soldiers Effects to father Benjamin.

His outstanding Army pay and a War Gratuity of £9-10s went to his father. The pension card in the name of his mother at 5 Sleepers Hill, Walton, does not specify the amount awarded, if any.

B. Whittaker, K.L.R. ( with no battalion listed) is commemorated twice in the Hall of Remembrance, Liverpool Town Hall at Panels 31 and 33 Left. 

In 1939 his parents, both 63, still lived at 5 Sleepers Hill, his father still a lamplighter for Liverpool Corporation. In the household is Arthur Whittaker, about to turn 17, a fruit porter. Arthur was born in 1922 (mother’s maiden name Whittaker), evidently the child of one of the family’s daughters.

His younger brother William (Bill), 26, newly married, lived in Leadenhall Street, and worked as a cotton porter for Rally Brothers.

Bill served as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery in the Second World War. He was captured on Java on 08th March 1942 when the Japanese overran the Dutch East Indies, and  transported to Japan on a “hell ship”. He died of dysentery in Yawata Camp, Ohama, Hiroshima on 07th December 1942.

The bodies of POWs who died in the camps were cremated, and after the war their ashes were conveyed to Australia and  interred in Sydney War Cemetery. Bill was 29 years old and the father of a baby daughter. His wife learned of his death in August 1943.

His father died aged 79 at the end of 1955 and his mother in 1957 aged 81, after suffering the loss of one son in the First World War and another in the Second World War.

We currently have no further information on Benjamin Whittaker, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.