Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
He joined up at 36, won medal then died days after armistice
11/11/1918-11/11/2018: 100 years since end of World War 1 Readers share their memories of loved ones who fought… and died
To mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, we will be telling the stories of some of its heroes. Today 82-year-old Alan Wilebore pays tribute to his brave Royal Engineer grandfather Ernest Willliam Wilebore, killed four days after the armistice:
My family originally come from Hinkley in Leicestershire where they worked as weavers until the 1890s before they moved to Willesden in North London in search of employment. My grandfather Ernest was a 36-year-old grave digger when he enlisted in July 1915 into the 11th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment in Mill Hill. But in a strange coincidence, given his previous job, he was transferred in the field to the 180th Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers to work as a miner – or “the moles”. My grandfather’s job was to remove deadly German delay action mines from the trenches.
His company were at St Emile during the great German offensive in the spring of 1918, where the situation got so dire the Royal Engineers had to fight as emergency infantry.
Despite their lack of combat training, my grandfather along with other men from his section were awarded the Military Medal for taking despatches in the field under fire, a brave action that was said to have resulted in excess of 200 enemy casualties. On November 15, 1918 – four days after the war ended – my grandfather’s company were at Epehy clearing mines when an explosion killed him and six others. He was 39 when he died, leaving his wife Sarah back in North London to singlehandedly bring up their eight children, whose ages ranged from two to 18 years old.
Their fifth child, my father Richard, was 12 when his mother received a letter to say her husband had been killed. His belongings including a pocket watch and letters were returned but he was buried in the British military cemetery Templeux-le-guerard in the Somme.
An old Victorian lady, my grandmother lived in the same house in Willesden where she still used gas lights until her death in 1973 aged 95. Like so many strong women of her generation, she won the war for us back home.