Pte 49064 Percy Collier

Percy was baptised in St. Margaret’s Church, Anfield, on 16th June 1897, his parents’ residence listed as 23 Rosett Street, and his father’s occupation as bookkeeper.

 

In 1901 the family is living at 16 Hilberry Avenue, Tuebrook. His father is 32, a dock wharfinger, his mother is 28, Reginald is 6, Percy 3, and Charles six months old.  They have a boarder, an 18-year old apprentice cycle maker.

 

His mother died in January 1911, aged 39.  

 

The 1911 census finds the family living at 12 Auburn Road, Tuebrook. His father, 42, is still employed as a wharfinger, Reginald is 17, a junior clerk, Percy is 13 and Charles 10.  They have a housekeeper, a 49-year old widow, Ellen Murphy.

 

He enlisted in Liverpool initially servng with the 20th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment. The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he served for over two and a half years, enlisting in about August 1915, when he would have been 18 years old. He must have lied about his age in order to serve overseas. At some point he was posted to the 19th Battalion possibly when the 20th Bn was disbanded in France in February 1918. 

 

Percy was declared Missing between 22nd-30th March 1918 and his name published in the list of those Missing in the Weekly Casualty List on 4th June 1918.

 

His brother Reginald, a Sergeant serving with the A.S.C. “A” and “Q” Branch, 55th Division H.Q., B.E.F. France, contacted the International Red Cross requesting information on Percy, officially wounded and missing 22/3/1918, but received a reply dated 9th July 1918 that they held no records.

 

His death was later assumed, for official purposes, to have occurred on 30th March 1918. 

As Graham Maddocks points out in his book The Liverpool Pals, the CWGC records 38 men of the 19^th Bn of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as killed in action on 30^th March 1918 when as the Battalion diary below, shown in bold type, records that the men were actually out of the line and safely on the way to St Valery- sur- Somme.

The composite battalion moved off from ROUVREL at 8.30 am at 50 yards interval between companies, arriving at SALEUX at 3.20 pm where they entrained, detraining at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME the same night. The night was spent at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME.

Apart from those whose bodies were not found and are commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial all but two have burial sites at Savy British Cemetery, which itself is within a couple of miles of Roupy and contains most of the identified men killed on 22^nd March 1918. Therefore, it would appear that the date of death for these men shown as 30^th March 1918 is purely an arbitrary one and that they were in fact killed on 22^nd March. 

Percy is commemorated in Savy British Cemetery, France, where a Special Kipling Memorial reads

“To the Memory of these 68 British Soldiers who were killed in action in March 1918 and buried at the time in the German Cemetery on the St. Quentin - Roupy Road, whose graves are now lost.”.

Savy was taken by the 32nd Division on the 1st April 1917, after hard fighting, and Savy Wood on the 2nd. On the 21st March 1918 Savy and Roupy were successfully defended by the 30th Division, but the line was withdrawn after nightfall. The village and the wood were retaken on the 17th September 1918 by the 34th French Division, fighting on the right of the British IX Corps.

Savy British Cemetery was made in 1919, and the graves from the battlefields and from the following small cemeteries in the neighbourhood were concentrated into it.

There are now over 850, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, more than half are unidentified. Memorials are erected in the cemetery to 68 soldiers (chiefly of the 19th King's Liverpools and the 17th Manchesters), buried by the Germans in their cemetery on the St. Quentin-Roupy road, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

The Cemetery covers an area of 2,555 square metres and is enclosed by a low rubble wall.

Although his CWGC headstone shows his age as 22, based on birth, baptism, and census records, Percy would have been only 20 years old.

One year after his death his father appeals for information in the Liverpool Daily Post on the 27th March 1919:

COLLIER - Missing since March 23, 1918 private PERCY COLLIER, 19th King's Liverpool Regt. (Pals), late of 9th K.L.R. Any information from his comrades or returned prisoners would be thankfully received by his father, 12 Auburn Road, Tuebrook, Liverpool.

His brother Reginald enlisted at the outbreak of war on 6th August 1914 in the 9th K.L.R. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, and was demobbed in July 1919.

 

Percy’s father received his Army effects and a War Gratuity of £15.  He died in 1929, aged 61.

 

Percy is commemorated on the following memorials -
 

Lister Drive County Primary Junior School, Tuebrook

St. John the Baptist Church, Tuebrook