Above Photo: A sentry post in France – Liverpool Daily Post 03 February 1940
France. February 1940. The landscape is snow-covered and there are temperatures of 10 degrees below zero. Three men died after bringing a brazier inside their billet to keep warm. Special leave to Britain is allowed and some men go home to get married. The Birmingham Daily Gazette reports that the B.E.F. is tired of the old songs and asks the B.B.C. Chief for the new. There had been too much “Tipperary” when “Roll Out the Barrel” was preferable.
And in the cold of this France, James Wright, my 4th cousin 1x removed died on the 7 Feb 1940. He was a Lance Corporal in the Royal Army Service Corps, service number T/16219. The third son of John William Wright, a dock yard labourer, and Olive Ashman and one of eight children. His death was reported on War Office Casualty List No. 123. He was 36 years old, having been born in Dover on 30 Apr 1903.
Dover Express 9 Feb 1940
James was buried in the Terlincthun British Cemetery, Wimille in plot 19, row A, grave 7. This is at Pas-de-Calais, France.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission states:
During the Second World War, there was heavy fighting in the area in 1940. Wimille was devastated when, from 22 – 25 May, the garrison at Boulogne fought a spirited delaying action covering the withdrawal to Dunkirk. There was some fighting in Wimille again in 1944. The cemetery suffered considerable damage both from the shelling in 1940 and during the German occupation. The cemetery now contains 4,378 Commonwealth burials of the First World War and more than 200 war graves of other nationalities, most of them German. Second World War burials number 149.
