Family :

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

9 April - 16 June 1917. The Arras Offensive consisted of a series of linked attacks starting with the Anglo Canadian assault on the dominant Vimy Ridge feature through the battles in the Scarpe River valley and up to the assaults on the Hindenburg line in the summer of 1917.

Detail :

Men of Horley 1914-1918 by Doug Cox. Enhanced by Redhill Centre for Local and Family History. His family was presented with a Salfords Memorial Scroll. Lives of the First World War has the Service Number as 35046.

35046 Private Henry Walker Liles, 23rd Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers (4th Tyneside Scottish Battalion) Henry was born in 1882 in Paddington, London, to Frederick and Caroline Liles. He had two younger sisters and grew up in a succession of Public Houses as his father was a publican. By 1911 Henry had married Lilian and was a licensed victualler, a publican, like his father, and they lived at 62, Akerman Street, Brixton. Later on Caroline, now widowed, and Lilian lived at The Nags Head, near Earlswood Common and this was probably Henry’s last address. Henry enlisted in Acton and it is not known how he came to join a northern based Regiment. The 4th Tyneside Scottish came under orders of 102nd Brigade, 34th Division and landed in France in January 1916. The Tyneside Scottish first saw action in the Battle of the Somme when, on 1st July 1916, they lost 629 men (19 officers and 610 other ranks), the third worst battalion loss of the day. It is unlikely that Henry had joined the battalion by this time and he was probably in the draft that supplied replacements for men killed in this action. In April and May 1917 the battalion was in action at the Battle of Arras where they sustained 275 casualties and it seems certain that Henry received the wounds from which he died in this battle. In the thirty-nine days that the battle lasted, the average casualty rate was far higher than at either the Somme or Passchendaele. Henry was taken to the 8th Casualty Clearing Station where he died from his wounds on 11th June 1917, aged 35. Henry Liles is buried at Duisans British Cemetery, near Etrun, about 2 miles north west of Arras.

Masonic :

Listed as a 34 year old Licensed Victualler from Chiswick when initiated in 1916. The contribution record shows he "Died June 1917."

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley