Colin Leslie Whitehand

Born: 14 January 1899

Died: 20 November 1918

Rank and Regiment: Private 35038 in the 8th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment.

Resting Place: Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery, Poland - Grave III. B. 9

Colin Leslie Whitehand was born in Gillingham, Norfolk, on 14 January 1899 and was baptised there on 26 February 1899. He was the son of Frederick and Isabella Whitehand. His father appears in the 1901 Census for Gillingham as a Police Constable. The couple had five children of whom Colin was the youngest. The other children were named Frederick (13, born in Whinburgh); Herbert (12, born in Whinburgh); Edith (aged 5, born in Poringland) and Frank (aged 8, born in Whissonsett).

The 1911 Census for Dereham Road, Garvestone, lists Frederick Whitehand, 57, Police pensioner and labourer on poultry farm, Isabella, 50, born in Yaxham; and three of their children Frank, Edith and Colin. Herbert had by now moved away; he was living as a boarder in Newmarket and following in his father’s footsteps, working as a police officer. Sadly, Herbert is noted under the Whinburgh page. Frederick, too, had left home; he was serving as an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy in the Far East.

Colin Whitehand’s enlistment papers survive. He was no 37117 in the Training Reserve Battalion.

When he was examined at Norwich in 1917, he was 5 ft 10 in tall, very tall for the time (but then, his father will have been in secure and reasonably paid employment while he was growing up), and weighed a fairly strapping 192 lb (13 st 10 lb).

He transferred to the East Surrey Regiment on 23 January 1918. He was reported missing at about 1545 on 23 May 1918 and was subsequently reported to have been taken prisoner.

He died of encephalitis in a PoW Hospital at Czersk, Poland, tragically just after the Armistice, on 20 November 1918.

He is buried at Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery, in Poland (Grave III. B. 9). After the war, the graves of British and Empire servicemen who had died in Poland as prisoners of war were gathered together in this cemetery; there are 174 of them in all. The inscription on his gravestone reads:

GOD'S WILL BE DONE

Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery, Poland