Private Walter Jaundrill was a coalminer from Sewell Street, Prescot. He enlisted in 11th Battalion, King’s (Liverpool) Regiment on 24 August 1914, just over a month after the war broke out. The following January, the Battalion was redesignated as a Pioneer battalion, and their artillery training was supplemented with bridge-building, mine digging, road making and trench construction.

 

On 11th June 1916, Private Walter Jaundrill transferred to the 17th Battalion, King’s Regiment, and a week later he was on front line trench duty. He was listed in a Red Cross Supplementary List as “unofficially missing, 25 July 1916”. His wife and three children were notified by the letter on display, dated 20 October 1917, that as no news of any soldiers missing from his Battalion had been received that they were to be presumed dead. Strangely, he had already been officially recorded as having been killed on 30 July 1916, and this had been reported in Prescot Parish Magazine dated 28 June 1917.

 

He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal shown here. For some reason, his British War Medal is suspended from the ribbon of a Defence Medal, 1939 to 1945. When the group of medals was donated to Prescot Museum, the ribbon was in place, so it has not been altered. The large bronze disc bearing Walter Jaundrill’s name is an example of a Memorial Plaque; one of these was individually cast for each serviceman killed during the Great War and issued to their next of kin. He was 35.