| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information
Walter Fox was born at North Dalton the 10 Jul 1881 and baptised the 28 Aug 1881. His father George Fox was a farm labourer, originally from Wingfield, Suffolk. George married Emma Tranmer in 1879 in Middleton on the Wolds, they had seven children before her death in 1891. Walter was their second eldest child. George married recently widowed Mary Doyle in Beverley in 1896, she was born to a military family in Poona, India in 1868. The family moved into Beverley and in 1891, George was working at the gas works but later became a tanner’s labourer. The family home was 23 Sloe Lane in Beverley but before the war they moved to Pighill Lane. Walter joined the Post Office in 1903 as an assistant lineman, putting up the new telephone wire network. He worked in the East Riding and is recorded in the 1911 census in the Elloughton area.
Walter enlisted in Leeds in Nov 1914 and after passing various skills tests was assigned as a sapper to the Royal Engineers’ Northern 12th Airline Section. Their role was to erect telegraph poles and install wiring for communications, unlike the Royal Signals which dealt with wiring at or below ground level. He left Bristol on 23 Feb 1915 for Egypt and he was to spend the entire war in the region: 1915-16 in Egypt; in 1917 in the British colony of Cyprus; and the further time in Egypt. He was released from the army at Chatham on 13 Jun 1919. Little is known of the specifics of his time there but he did have one period in hospital in late 1917. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory medals. His army records stress his good character and his proficiency in his role.
After the war Walter returned to the Post Office as a linesman in the Beverley area before retiring in the late 1930s. He didn't marry and died at Howden in the spring of 1972.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |