Pte 30178 Oswald Davies

• Age: 29
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: 13th Kings
• Died on Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Tilloy Bc
  Panel Ref: IV.E.22

Oswald Davies was born on 20th April 1887, the son of Hugh Davies and his wife Anne (nee Stevenson) who had married in St Philemon's Church, Toxteth, Liverpool in 1881. Oswald was baptised in the same church in September 1887. It is recorded on Oswald’s birth certificate and his parents marriage certificate that his father Hugh is a police officer.

The 1901 Census records the family living at 93 Stanfield Street, Everton. His father, Hugh, is 44 year of age and was born in Wales, he was working as a police constable. His mother Anne is 40 and had been born in Market Drayton. The couple have four children living at home, they are: Sidney aged 18 and Oswald aged 13 who are both working as telegraph messengers, Percy aged 10 and 7 year old Annie. The couple go on to have another daughter called Florence in 1902.

Oswald married Grace Humphreys in Liverpool in 1909.

The 1911 census records that the couple live at 58 Warwick Street, Cheetham, Manchester, where they live with their 18 month old triplets – Oswald, John and Jane who are shown to have been born in Menai Bridge, Anglesey, the same birthplace as their mother. At the time of the census Jane is in hospital. The couple have another daughter Annie later in 1911.

Oswald enlisted in Liverpool joining the 17th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 30178. He subsequently transferred to the 13th Battalion KL..R.

He was killed in action on the 09th of April 1917, aged 29.

He now rests at Tilloy British Cemetery, Tilloy-les-Mofflaines, Pas de Calais, where his headstone bears the epitaph:

FOR EVER WITH THE LORD

Tilloy-Les-Mofflaines was taken by Commonwealth troops on 9 April 1917, but it was partly in German hands again from March to August 1918. The cemetery was begun in April 1917 by fighting units and burial officers, and Rows A to H in Plot I largely represent burials from the battlefield. The remaining graves in Plot I, and others in the first three rows of Plot II, represent later fighting in 1917 and the first three months of 1918, and the clearing of the village in August 1918. These 390 original burials were increased after the Armistice when graves were brought in from a wide area east of Arras and from other smaller burial grounds. The cemetery now contains 1,642 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 611 of the burials are unidentified, but there are special memorials to 14 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials commemorate 11 men of the 6th Bn. K.O.S.B., buried in Tees Trench Cemetery No.2, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

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