W HOSKEN London Regt 2nd/16th Rifles 18/3/1917

[RanR]

Thank you to all who have given me such valuable information about my other two great uncles (this man's brothers - Henry Richard Hosken & George James Hosken).

I'd really appreciate any help that anyone can give me with this man's regiment and the possible battle that resulted in his death.

William Hosken was born c. 1889/90 and went to New Zealand in about 1912 to try his hand at farming.  He came back to Britain when war was declared and joined up as a rifleman with the London Regiment (Queen's Westminster Rifles) 2nd/16th bn regimental no 5367. 552374 and was a Private.

He is commemorated at the Karasouli Military Cemetery in Greece.

Does anyone know anything about this regiment and battalion and does anyone perhaps have an idea of the battle that might have been fought by them that would lead to his death 18/3/1917?

Family legend has it that he was in the camp with his younger brother Edgar (my grandfather) and a shell burst in the camp killing William and injuring Edgar .

Edgar's medal card seems to imply that Edgar enlisted in the same battalion as his older brother William 2nd/16th London Regiment (Rifles) and that Edgar was a private who was sent to France in June 1916.  At some point he must have returned to retrain at officers training camp in Cambridge.  I have a letter dated 16/1/1918 from him that is addressed as Cadet Edgar Hosken, A coy no. 2 O.E.B. (I think those are the abbreviations - hard to read) at Queen's College, Cambridge.  I then have his commission dated 12/6/1918 for 2nd Lt Territorials of 15th County of London battalion London Regiment (Prince of Wales own Rifles).

So I'm assuming that he did get invalided out of the army in March 1917 when he was supposedly injured by the same shell as killed his brother William (who died 18/3/1917) but that they had been posted away from France by then - somewhere around the Salonika region or maybe even as far as Palestine to agree with family legend) and that's why William was buried in Karasouli Cemetery in Greece.

I suppose that Edgar then recovered from his injuries and retrained to take a commission in the 15th London Regt (Prince of Wales own Rifles) and went out somewhere or other - maybe France again - not sure where this regiment went in June 1918 and then managed to stay alive long enough to the end of the war to come back and marry my grandmother and continue the family line!

So any information on either of those regiments and battles would be excellent.

Very sorry to bore you with all the details but looking at all the different documentation does make it feel rather like detective work (and it's always good to have another pair of eyes or two to look over such thoughts to confirm them or to find any mistakes in them).

Thank you very much indeed for all your help and kind assistance - very much appreciated.
Ruth

I should have found all this so much easier if I'd just asked my grandfather but he died when I was only 8 so I wasn't really old enough to think of these things then!

[apwright]

Hi Ruth,

Sorry to be so late replying! I haven't been online much recently.

552374 Rifleman William HOSKEN was one of two men killed (the other being 554442 Rfn Harold Arthur FISH) when the battalion bivouac around the dirt-road junction called Tertre Vert (Google Earth coordinates 41.1122 22.6816) was shelled at about 4pm on 18 March 1917. Two officers and 9 other NCOs and men were wounded.

The battalion (in 179th Brigade, 60th (London) Division) had only moved up to the Front on 15 March after spending the previous 3 months around Katerini, patrolling the "buffer zone" between the Allied armies (British, French, Serbian, Italian, Russian) operating in northern Greece with the blessing of the breakaway Greek Nationalist (Venizelist) government in Salonika, and the still-neutral-but-potentially-hostile Greek Royalist army to the south.

At 4pm on 18 March, when they were shelled, the men would have been in the process of breaking camp - after 2 nights at Tertre Vert - in preparation for moving into the front-line trenches in the hills and ravines slightly further north to relieve 10th Bn Black Watch, which they accomplished between 7pm on 18th and 2:20am on 19th.
Their opponents on the other side of the barbed wire were (I think!) elements of the elite Bulgarian 9th (Pleven) Division.

Hope this helps!
Adrian
(in Salonika)

P.S. If you want a photo of William's gravestone in Karasouli Cemetery, drop me a PM with your email address!

EDIT: 60th Division was indeed sent to Palestine in June 1917, where it spent the rest of the war, see http://www.1914-1918.net/60div.htm

[RanR]

This is amazingly precise and so helpful.  Thank you so much.  I'm very gateful to you.  This is just the kind of specific information I was having pipe dreams about receiving so never expected anything as detailed as this.  You're a star. 

And yes please ... I would very much like a photo if you can manage it without too much inconvenience to yourself.  I'll send a PM.

Just as a matter of interest, was this information from the regimental diary or something like that?  I'm wondering where this information is in case that's the kind of record I need to try to find for my other great uncles' war deaths.

I shall be googling all sorts of things now using this information you've given me.

Thanks again - very much appreciated.
Ruth

[forester]

Ruth,

I've tried to find Edgar's service record, but can only find this one, which I can't verify against WO 338: WO 374/34844.

http://www.rootschat.com/links/0ai2/

Henry Richard's appears to be in WO 339/69043. The corresponding entry in WO 338 gives Henry Richard Hosken, 79th Regiment attached MGC, 2nd Lieutenant, Dead. Do you know of any connection with the Cameron Highlanders?

http://www.rootschat.com/links/0ai3/

Phil (A Sussex OPC)