HOWELLS, Frederick D

Frederick Howells was born in Lye and then lived at Wollaston. He attended Wollaston C of E School from 1900 to 1906 and left to become a pattern maker. Later he was employed as a gardener by Mr F Palfrey of Wood Street and probably lived at 39 King Street. He volunteered in December 1914 and joined the Grenadier Guards. He was sent to the 3rd Battalion in the Guards Division which fought at Loos and the Hohenzollern Redoubt in September and October 1915. By the Spring of 1916 the troops had moved to Flanders which was a relatively quiet sector at that time. However, front line duty was always accompanied by shell fire and the need to patrol 'no man's land'. Private Frederick Howells was killed in action on the 29th March 1916. He had been acting as section leader and was shot by a sniper. He was 24 years of age and is buried in Potijze Burial Ground Cemetery, Ypres (C 9) And commemorated on the Stourbridge and Wollaston church Memorials. His brother, Thomas, was awarded the Military Medal in the Great War and his nephew, Kenneth, was killed in Normandy in 1944.