Additions will be checked before being published on the website and where possible will be forwarded to the person who submitted the original entries. Your contact details will not be forwarded, but they can send a reply via this messaging system.
please scroll down to send a message
Pte. John Frederick White
British Army 3rd Wessex Field Ambulance Royal Army Medical Corps
from:Portsmouth
(d.31st July 1917)
My Uncle John White was born at 11 Woodlands Street, Kingston, Portsmouth. He was the eldest child of John Frederick White RN and Mary Ann White and brother to Grace Dye, my mother. John was better known as Jack to family and friends. He developed a passion for music and was talented in both piano and clarinet and took the later to war.
He enlisted into the Royal Army Medical Corps on the 19th of August 1915 in the 3rd Wessex Field Ambulance with the regimental number 2375. The Territorial force was sent to France in November 1914, during the war it was renumbered as the 217th Field Ambulance RAMC. He was a Stretcher bearer After some weeks at the 1st Territorial base at Rouen he was posted to the 4th Field Ambulance, 8th division in France on 4th of October 1916. On the 10th December 1916 he was posted to the 26th Field Ambulance also in the 8th Division. His regimental number was changed to 461550 early in 1917 when all territorial force soldiers were allotted new numbers.
Jack was killed in action at the battle of Pilckem. His mother, my grandmother, never forgot her son and remembered him every year up till her death in 1949 by placing a memorial in the Portsmouth Evening News. This is one of them.
Short was your life my darling son,
But peaceful be your rest.
Your mother misses you most of all
because she loved you best
When all alone I sit and think
I seem to hear you say,
keep up your heart dear mother.
we will meet again some day
In all those dark days John experienced he made time to send many postcards and presents to his family. Wish I could tell him how proud the family are.
