Cpl 57605 Samuel Robert Dredge Wright

• Age: 20
• From: Bendingo, Victoria, Australia
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• D.O.W Sunday 24th June 1917
• Commemorated at: Railway Dugout B.g. Zillebeke
  Panel Ref: Sp.Mem.F.9

Samuel Robert Dredge Wright was born in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia in about 1897, the only son of  William Ripley Wright and his wife Carrie (nee Dredge).  He was known to the family as Bertie, but later used the name Robert.  His mother appears to have died when Robert was very young, as he was brought to England by his paternal aunt, Amy Wright (who was born in Bradford, Yorkshire), when he was about three years old.

By 1901 Robert, listed as Samuel R.D. Wright, and his aunt Amy are living with a Sarah Bentley, in ‘Dean Wood’, Rivington, Lancashire.  Amy is a trained nurse, working on her own account. They have a domestic servant. Robert is 4.

In 1911 Robert is living with another aunt and uncle, John and Mary Ann Stakes, at 5 Upper Rushton Road, Bradford, Yorkshire.  Also in the household is his uncle’s widowed sister in law, Margaret Jane Singleton. Robert is 14, at school; he was a pupil at the Hanson School in Bradford.   The census shows his  aunt Amy as the Hospital Sister, head, in the Thornton Infectious Disease Hospital, Bradford.

Robert enlisted in Bradford, in the 67 West Riding Divisional Cyclist Company, and at some point was transferred to the 19^th Bn King’s (Liverpool) Regiment.   It is not known when he was wounded, but in June 1917 the battalion was in the Ypres salient, in the front line south of Hooge.  Robert died from his wounds at 72 Field Ambulance on 24^th June 1917.  He was 20 years old.

Robert now rests in Railway Dugout Burial Ground, Zillebeke, Flanders.

The commune of Zillebeke contains many Commonwealth cemeteries as the front line trenches ran through it during the greater part of the First World War.

Railway Dugouts Cemetery is 2 Kms west of Zillebeke village, where the railway runs on an embankment overlooking a small farmstead, which was known to the troops as Transport Farm. The site of the cemetery was screened by slightly rising ground to the east, and burials began there in April 1915. They continued until the Armistice, especially in 1916 and 1917, when Advanced Dressing Stations were placed in the dugouts and the farm. They were made in small groups, without any definite arrangement and in the summer of 1917 a considerable number were obliterated by shell fire before they could be marked. The names "Railway Dugouts" and "Transport Farm" were both used for the cemetery.

At the time of the Armistice, more than 1,700 graves in the cemetery were known and marked. Other graves were then brought in from the battlefields and small cemeteries in the vicinity, and a number of the known graves destroyed by artillery fire were specially commemorated. The latter were mainly in the present Plots IV and VII.

The cemetery now contains 2,459 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 430 of the burials are unidentified and 261 casualties are represented by special memorials. Other special memorials record the names of 72 casualties buried in Valley Cottages and Transport Farm Annexe Cemeteries whose graves were destroyed in later fighting.

The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Samuel's grave was one such as the inscription on his headstone reads:

"THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT"

This phrase was decided uopn by Rudyard Kipling and is used when the burial place of a soldier is not known. It is a biblical reference from Ecclesiasticus 44:13 which reads in full as: "Their seed shall remain forever, and their glory shall not be blotted out" 

His pension card shows next of kin, his aunt Mrs. Mary Ann Stakes, 51 Roydstone Terr., Bradford, and “Aunt” in loco Miss Amy Wright, Isolation Hospital, Thornton, Bradford.

His death was reported in the Bradford Weekly Telegraph on 20^th July 1917;– 

“Corporal Bert, only son of William and Carrie Wright, and nephew of Mrs. Wright, of the isolation hospital, Thornton, has died of wounds received in action.  He was born at Bendigo, Australia, twenty years ago, but was educated at Hanson School, Bradford.”

It also featured in the Bendigo Independent on 08^th September 1917:  

 “Died of Wounds.  Mrs. and Mrs. S. Dredge, of 10 Burn Street, Golden Square, have received word from England that their only grandson, Bertie Wright, only son of William Ripley Wright and the late Carrie Wright, late of Bendigo, was wounded in France and later died of wounds on June 24, 1917, in the isolation hospital, Thornton, England, aged 20 years.  Corporal Wright was attached to the King’s Liverpool Regiment.  He was a native of Golden Square and was only three years of age when his aunt, Miss Amy Wright, took him to England, where he resided till the time of enlisting with his regiment.  He has done his duty well, and died for freedom’s cause and empire.” 

(There seems to have been some miscommunication, as his aunt Amy worked in the isolation hospital.)

Robert Wright is commemorated on the Hanson School Memorial and Bradford Roll of Honour.

Robert (Bert) Wright is commemorated on the Greenhill Methodist Church Memorial, Bradford.

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