Frederick Westlake. Died 29 October 1914
Frederick Westlake was born in Wokingham in 1886 the fourth of John and Ellen’s five sons. They lived at 59 Havelock Road, Wokingham, which is just opposite the town’s railway station. Frederick, joined the Royal Berks long before the war started and was already in the 1st Battalion by the time the census was recorded in 1911.
From an obituary that appeared in the Reading Standard on 14th November 1914 we know that Fred had formerly been an attendant at Broadmoor.
The Battalion saw almost instant fighting and Frederick’s war was a short one, being killed right in the middle of the First Battle of Ypres. Ypres was, by the end of the war to account for a huge part of the Regiment’s loss to the point of its virtual obliteration by the war’s end.
John Chapman, in his excellent web site, www.purley.eu describes the 1st Battalion’s first engagements: ’The 1st Battalion was at Aldershot when war was declared. They departed for France on the 12th August 1914 and participated in the retreat from Mons as part of 6th Brigade. Their first major action was at the Bridge on the Sambre 25th/26th August. The end point of the Retreat was reached on 7th September when they reached Le Poteau.
The flow of fighting was reversed on 9th September when they crossed the Marne and then the Aisneon the 14th. They then settled into trench warfare based at La Metz Farm.
One of the first executions of the war took place there on 26th September when 9641 Pte George Ward was shot for cowardice. The Battalion was involved in the 1st Battle of Ypres from the 22nd October to the 13th November’.
Discovered a photo of W Westlake of Havelock Road, presume a brother. Photo says wounded in both legs.
I can confirm that William was indeed Frederick’s brother. He survived the war, and died in 1966 at the age of 86.