People on board

WALLIS, John Buckeridge

John Buckeridge Wallis was born on the 7th of May 1892 in Chitterne, on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire to Frederick Buckeridge Wallis and Ellen Ann Bartlett. The Wallis family had been living in the village of Chitterne since the seventeenth century and on Manor House Farm for over 150 years. A seventeenth century ancestor was Bishop John Buckeridge of Ely, from where the family name came. John, known as Jack, was the fourth of their ten children, all of whom survived to adulthood, and the second son. In the 1891 census the two eldest girls were at boarding school in Berkshire while the boys, including Jack, later went to Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire.

In the 1911 census Jack, aged eighteen, was a ‘Farmer’s Son Working on Farm’ while his father Frederick gave his occupation as Farmer and Malster. Jack enlisted in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, later transferring to the Wiltshire Regiment, as did his brother Maurice. Jack Wallis was a Sergeant in the Yeomanry, Service Number 422, while Maurice was an Acting Corporal by the end of the war. Jack received his commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the Wiltshire Regiment. In October 1918 both were with the 4th Battalion of the Territorial Force which had moved to Dublin in May of that year.

Presumably returning home on leave, Jack Wallis travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin. His name is recorded on the Dauntsey’s School Roll of Honour and on Chitterne War Memorial. Also listed on that memorial, as having fought in the war, is his brother Maurice and two other names, V Wallis and D. Wallis, both Gunners and most probably his younger brothers Victor and Donald.