Newman CAVILL

307158, Private. b. 1894, Queensbury d. Sat. 9th June 1917 (aged 23).

Newman Cavill is shown, aged 7 living at 25 Alma St in Queensbury with his Father John, a nightwatchman, mother Emma aged 40, a woollen weaver and his younger brother John Stewart Cavill, aged 5. By 1911, Newman’s father had died and Mum Emma and the two boys are living at 2 Peel Street, Queensbury, aged 17 and 15. Newman is a wool sorter and John a worsted spinner.

Newman married Annie Beatrice Woodford in Winter 1914. They had one child Agnes Cavill who was born on 1st April 1915.

Newman was conscripted into the army in early 1916 into the West Yorkshire’s and was sent out to France in early 1917 where he joined the 2nd/6th Northumberland Fusiliers. He was posted to the Arras region of Belgium where the British launched their first major campaign of 1917 which has become known as the Battle of Arras and third battle of Ypres. This was a precursor to the Battle of Passchendaele, a name that conjures images of conditions that up until that point were unthinkable in the mind.

Part of the reason behind the start of the Arras campaign was to attempt to relieve the pressure that the French military forces were under. A series of gruelling campaigns with very little sight of a victory had caused French morale to drop to an all time low and in many cases the army was grinding to a slow halt as more and more troops refused to obey orders. These factors (combined with the additional reality that with the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, the Axis defences were virtually impregnable along the French front line) meant that an Allied offensive was the only option.

The advance began in April 1917 and sporadically lasted throughout the summer months, with a consistent flow of casualties on both sides at every point, and it was two months into this that Newman died. He was wounded in action, but whilst in transit to a nearby hospital succumbed to these wounds. The pension ledger records his death as ‘accidentally killed whilst on active service’.

He was laid to rest in a cemetery along with men who shared a similar fate near to the French village of Achiet-le-Grand.

Annie Beatrice remarried in 1920 to James Hanson. They lived in Clayton Heights. Newmans younger brother John Stewart Cavill survived the war. The 1939 register shows him living at 36 New Park Road in Queensbury with his wife Vera and two children.

Newman Cavill is also listed on the Queensbury war memorial, read about this here.