Eddie Mawtus
EDWIN MAWTUS was just 18 years old when he perished on a French battlefield, a week before Armistice Day. Now, he is set to be honoured at the church where he went to school as a child, a century on from his death.
His name is one of three inscribed on the alter rail at St John’s Church in Minskip. With just a few months to go until the anniversary of the death of the infantryman, who was known as Eddie to his family and friends, the search is on for the descendants of the two other fallen villagers - Walter Blades and Joseph Crooks.
On November 4, exactly 100 years from Mr Mawtus’s death, Jill Bowes, whose mother was his cousin, will plant a cherry tree in the churchyard at St John’s as part of a service that will commemorate all three of Minskip’s First World War lost. The service starts at 11.00am.
Mrs Bowes, who lives in Scarborough, first discovered Eddie’s name on the alter rail a few years ago, when she visited Minskip while researching her mother’s family tree.
“This beautifully carved feature recognises the men’s sacrifice, their families’ loss and the sorrow of the whole community,” she said.
Her research uncovered that Eddie enlisted into the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry at the age of 18, and in November 1918, when war had raged in Europe for four years, he was deployed to the east of the Western Front in pursuit of enemy troops who were retreating towards the German border.
“The fighting was fierce as the Germans defended their rear flanks in a bid to avoid capture,” Mrs Bowes said. “The facts surrounding Eddie’s death are vague but the fourth of November appears to be the date when he lost his life in the Mormal Forest between Landreices and Le Cateau.”
She visited his grave at Cross Roads Cemetery in the small village of Foutaine-au-Bois in 2015.
“It is a beautiful, peaceful place surrounded by flat arable land, pastures and small woods, so much like his environment back home,” she said. “In a nearby cemetery is the grave of Wilfred Owen, the war poet, who died on the same day as Eddie.”
Before it was converted into a church in 1911, St John’s had been home to the village school, where it is believed Mr Mawtus, and possibly Mr Blades and Mr Crooks, would have attended.
RB
