Early Life :

Family :

Service Life:

Campaigns:

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

31 July - 10 November 1917. By the summer of 1917 the British Army was able for the first time to fight on its chosen ground on its terms. Having secured the southern ridges of Ypres at Messines in June, the main attack started on 31st July 1917 accompanied by what seemed like incessant heavy rain, which coupled with the artillery barrages conspired to turn much of the battlefield into a bog. Initial failure prompted changes in the high command and a strategy evolved to take the ring of ridges running across the Ypres salient in a series of 'bite and hold' operations, finally culminating in the capture of the most easterly ridge on which sat the infamous village of Passchendaele. The Official History carries the footnote ?The clerk power to investigate the exact losses was not available? but estimates of British casualties range from the official figure of 244,000 to almost 400,000. Within five months the Germans pushed the British back to the starting line, which was where they had been since May 1915.

Detail :

Second Lieutenant, 176th Company, The Machine Gun Corps attached to East Surrey Regiment. Killed in action at Ypres 16 August 1917. Aged 31. Son of Charles & Martha Thirlwell of ?Bradley? Annandale Avenue, Bognor. Manager of a rubber plantation in the East Indies before the war. Came home to enlist West Tarring Parish Church and Bognor War Memorial Hospital. Buried in Canada Farm Cemetery, Elverdinghe, Belgium


The battalion War Diary shows at PILKEM: "...15th August Training as for 14th. About 5pm an enemy High Velocity shell struck the officers Mess, Killing 2 Lieut F. Y. Pine & 2 Lt. W. H. Thirwell..."

He is buried next to Frank PINE of the same unit and Freemason of Manchester Lodge.

Also commemorated on the RBL Sussex Roll of Honour.

Masonic :

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