Walker, JW

Captain John Wickham Walker

John was born in Bawtry, Yorkshire, on May 7^th 1891, the eldest son of a solicitor, also named John Walker, and his wife Dorothy. He spent time at the Prep before, in the summer of 1904, joining the College, where he would stay for the next four years, throughout which he was a boarder in Elmlawn. He was a distinguished marksman, serving as a member of the Shooting VIII in his final two years, 1907 and 1908 – the winter inbetween which he spent as a playing member of the 3^rd XV. After leaving Dulwich he returned to Yorkshire, where he worked as a clerk with his father’s firm, ultimately going on to qualify as a solicitor himself in February 1913. He was also highly active as an Army reservist throughout this period, having taken a territorial commission in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in December 1908, subsequently being promoted to Lieutenant in the Spring of 1910.

John and his unit were mobilised upon the declaration of war in August 1914, and spent the rest of that year in a camp at Whitby, before leaving for the front in the early spring of 1915, shortly after which he was promoted to Captain. He spent much of the next eighteen months involved in heavy fighting in the trenches near Ypres -including being mentioned in dispatches in April 1916, except for a period of around six weeks spent on the staff of the Divisional School of Instruction, and another month which he spent on leave recovering from the effects of trench fever. In summer 1916 he was reassigned to the Somme, where he was on the front line near Thiepval during the early days of the battle that July. On the 5^th he was leading a small party in an attack on a German trench which was isolated and hit with heavy fire, costing the lives of all involved.