Rotherham WW1 veteran added to cenotaph after niece's appeal

A World War One soldier who died of his wounds seven years after the conflict ended has been added to a local memorial after an appeal by his family.

Private Walter Blackwell was injured in the fighting at Ypres in 1915, and never recovered his health before his death in 1926 at the age of 33.

After a campaign by his 93-year-old niece Betty Quinton, his name has been inscribed on the parish cenotaph in Wales, near his home in Kiveton Park, Rotherham.

Today Mrs Quinton attended a dedication service and said that her father "would have been so proud" of the inscription for his brother.

Private Blackwell was a miner, and after joining the Sherwood Foresters he was trained to dig tunnels underneath enemy lines where explosives could be placed.

He left a personal account of his time in the Army which revealed that a German shell fell on top of the shaft where he was working, causing it to collapse and trapping the men below.

He wrote: "We were just able to get out. Men were lying in all directions. Four of us entered a dug-out but the Germans dropped a gas shell on top of it. My three comrades lay dead. I was buried and badly wounded."

He suffered from the effects of gas poisoning and shell shock for the rest of his life, and eventually had to have a leg amputated.

Previously, the memorial had only featured those who had died as a direct result of the war before 1920.

Mrs Quinton said: "This young man had left a village he'd never left before to go off and fight for his king and country.

"My father used to talk about his brother; him and Walter were two that were very close to one another. I think it broke my dad's heart when Walter died."

The soldier and Mrs Quinton's father, Marquis, were from a family of nine sons, and their father was also a miner.

The Kiveton Park Colliery gave Private Blackwell a job as a cycle attendant after he returned from the Western Front, and he also had his own cycle repair workshop in a shed at home.

However, despite his family's efforts, his war pension was eventually withdrawn. Another one of his brothers, Arthur, served as an artillery gunner and was also gassed.

Richard Waller, who was acting clerk of Wales Parish Council when the decision was made to amend the memorial, said that it "rectified an injustice".

He said: "A long time ago the family had written to the War Graves Commission or the War Office and were told there was a cut-off date of 1920. This wasn't correct, as the War Memorials Trust advised me; it was down to local people to decide whose names went on the memorials. It was always something which could have been done."

Mrs Quinton added: "It just makes me so proud that I've, after all these years, achieved something that my dad couldn't in those years gone by."

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