Pte 300536 John Cook

John enlisted in Knowsley as Private 250358, in the 1/1st Battalion Lancashire Hussars Yeomanry (per medal roll; SDGW shows regimental number 1067).  As his service record has not survived, the details are not known, but based on the amount of the War Gratuity, John enlisted soon after war was declared, in August or September 1914. 

 

On 28th April 1915, most probably while he was still in training, John married Maud Noble in St. Margaret’s, Dunham Massey, Cheshire (the marriage record gives his father as James William). Maud was born in Retford, Nottinghamshire, (08th April 1892) and in 1911 was working as a domestic servant in Dunham Massey. 

 

The 100 Days Offensive, the Allied push that would eventually bring the war to an end, begins in August, and by early October the 18th Battalion arrives at the Hindenburg Line in the region of Bony.  The Allies pursue the retreating German Army, and the Armistice is signed on 11th November 1918.  

 

Three days after the guns fell silent John died of broncho pneumonia, on 14th November 1918.  He was 29 years old.  He was laid to rest in Grevillers British Cemetery. France.

The village of Grevillers was occupied by Commonwealth troops on 14 March 1917 and in April and May, the 3rd, 29th and 3rd Australian Casualty Clearing Stations were posted nearby. They began the cemetery and continued to use it until March 1918, when Grevillers was lost to the German during their great advance. On the following 24 August, the New Zealand Division recaptured Grevillers and in September, the 34th, 49th and 56th Casualty Clearing Stations came to the village and used the cemetery again. After the Armistice, 200 graves were brought in from the battlefields to the south of the village, 40 from an adjoining cemetery made during the German occupation.  There are now 2,106 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in GREVILLERS BRITISH CEMETERY. 189 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 18 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of two casualties, buried in Avesnes-les-Bapaume German Cemetery, whose graves could not be found. The cemetery also contains the graves of seven Second World War airmen, and 18 French war graves. Within the cemetery stands the GREVILLERS (NEW ZEALAND) MEMORIAL which commemorates almost 450 officers and men of the New Zealand Division who died in the defensive fighting in the area from March to August 1918, and in the Advance to Victory between 8 August and 11 November 1918, and who have no known grave. This is one of seven memorials in France and Belgium to those New Zealand soldiers who died on the Western Front and whose graves are not known. The memorials are all in cemeteries chosen as appropriate to the fighting in which the men died. The cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

John's death was recorded in theWeekly Casualty List on 07th January 1919:

DIED

KING'S LIVERPOOL REGIMENT, ATTACHED ROYAL AIR FORCE Cook 300536 J. (Retford) 

The CWGC Graves Registration form shows ‘attached RAF’. 

 

Maud, living at 4 Thomas Street, Retford, Notts, (the home of her widowed mother and siblings) received John’s effects, including a War Gratuity of £24-10s, and a pension of £1-0s-5d a week.  She later returned to Cheshire, and lived at 51 Finchley Road, Altrincham.  Maud remarried in 1928, had a son, and died in Cheshire in 1983. 

 

Their daughter Audrey married in 1938, lived in Hale, and had two daughters. The family emigrated in 1948, sailing on the Queen Mary from Southampton to New York, and settled in Ontario, Canada, where more children were born. Audrey died in 2005 aged 87.