Noel Reginald Annear

Noel Reginald Annear was born in Probus in late 1895.  His parents were Charles and Christina Claudine (nee Smith).  They are an interesting pair and worth outlining.  Noel’s father Charles was also born in Probus, in 1854.  Aged 17 he was serving in the Royal Navy, rated as Boy 1st Class.  He met his wife Christina in London, and at the time of their wedding they were both living at the same London address.  They were married at St Jude Church, Peckham, London, on 28th June 1881.  Charles was 28, his wife 23.  Christina was all the way from Stornaway, on the Isle of Harris, Scotland.  She was a registered midwife, gaining the qualification in 1901 and enrolling in 1905. The couple returned to Probus to settle down, possibly sometime prior to 1890, when one of their sons, Edwin, was born in Probus in 1891. 

 

Sadly, Noel was to lose both his parents, when still in his teens. He must not have known his father well, because his father died in July 1899.  His mother died shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1913, aged only 54.  So by the age of 17, Noel was ‘orphaned.’

 

The following two years of his life provided some dramatic changes. He had been training as a Mason’s Apprentice, but he like many others answered Lord Kitchener’s call early in the war for volunteers, after the regular army had become so depleted in the first months of the war. In the first half of 1915, he both enlisted and was married.  He married one Ethel Boardman, a dressmaker living in Redruth, but originally from Lancashire.  She was a few years older than him, at 26.  He may have been married while on leave after his basic training was completed, for on 27th July 1915, he had landed in France.  He had enlisted at Truro, and was now serving with the 1st Bn Duke of Cornwall’s light Infantry. 

 

In June of 1916 Private Noel Annear was in the vicinity of Simencourt, Northern France.  His battalion was acting as labourers, “digging emplacements and burying cables.”  The following day, the 26th June the 1st DCLI “moved up to the trenches in the evening and relieved the 5th Bn Liverpool Regiment, in front of Wailly.”  Wailly is a village near Arras, then a much contested French town.  Two companies were placed in the front line trenches and two more in the village of Wailly itself.  It rained heavily. 

 

On the following day, the 27th June the British artillery was active, the German reply “feeble.”  There was no big attack that day, no ‘going over the top’ or grand plan of action.  The day seems to be marked by static lines, desultory shelling and gun fire. During the night of the 27th, the War Diary states that “machine gun fire very active, sweeping the roads in the village of Wailly till 12 midnight.  Six shells from a light field gun were directed at roads near Le Petite Moulin.”  The battalion was “bombarded twice during the day, each lasting half an hour.”

 

No casualties are mentioned or recorded for this day, but it seems that Private Noel Annear must have been at least one.  Perhaps he was caught by the machine gun fire, racking the village.  Or perhaps he was caught by one of those shells, from the German light field gun.  He had been a soldier, for less than a year.

 

The few possessions he had with him in France were sent to his young, barely married widow in August that year.  Noel is buried in Wailly Orchard Cemetery, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.  It holds 353 war dead.