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Gunner. Sidney John Styles
British Army 60th Brigade, C Battery Royal Field Artillery
from:Powerstock, Dorset
(d.12th Aug 1915)
As part of a village project to commemorate the 11 names on the World War 1 memorial in St Mary’s church in Powerstock, Dorset, my daughter and I have researched the life of Sidney John Styles (service number 11695). The Forces War Record lists him as a Gunner in C Battery, 60th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. A young man from a large working-class family, an agricultural worker called up from an estate in rural West Dorset to serve in the British Army, whose life ended on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, some 2,300 miles away.
Sidney is recorded as having died in Cairo on 12 August 1915 and the Bridport News of 16 September 1915 reported that he had died of ‘an appendicitis’. However, he is not buried in the large Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Heliopolis, but in the Port Said War Memorial Cemetery on the Mediterranean coast. The town was an important hospital centre and I had the opportunity to visit Sidney in October this year. I had a cup of tea with him at his graveside.
Sidney John Styles died at the age of 21 of a medical complication unrelated to warfare, in a far away land, and probably did not see action during the bloodiest war of the 20th century. No photographs or any other information about him seem to have survived or stories been passed on through the generations. His name on the Weymouth War memorial and the plate in Powerstock church, along with 10 of his contemporaries are the only acknowledgement of his life.
