SELWAY, Harry

Harry Selway lived at Farlands House, Corser Street, Oldswinford, and was the younger son of Mr and Mrs E.H. Selway. He was educated at Stourbridge Grammar School and later worked for Harward and Evers, the well known firm of Stourbridge solicitors. He attended St. John’s church, where he served in the choir and the Sunday Schools. He volunteered in the first war rally in Stourbridge Town Hall for the local Territorials and joined the 1/7th Worcesters. They crossed to France in March 1915 and a few months later he was briefly back in England convalescing. In France most of the time was spent at Hebuterne, a pleasant village in the Somme sector. However, when the winter came, the appalling rain soaked the men continuously and the long sick-lists led to wastage greater than that caused by battle. It was almost certainly a resumption of sickness that caused Lance Corporal Harry Selway to become a casualty. He was sent to Wimereux Hospital near Boulogne and died there on the 9th December 1915. He was 24 years of age and is buried in Wimereux Communal Cemetery (1 K 29). Later Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Forces was buried in the same cemetery. His poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ is a very suitable epitaph, not only for the casualties in this cemetery but for all who died in the whole of this costly conflict. Harry Selway is commemorated on the Stourbridge, Oldswinford church, St. John’s church, St. Thomas’s church and King Edward VI College Memorials. There is a wall plaque memorial to him at St. John’s.