FRANK WINDIBANK
At the end of the Great War many soldiers were serving on the other side of the world and if often took them months, if not years, before they arrived home for discharge. Unfortunately this was a period when influenza was cutting swathes through the population at large and this often happened to servicemen as well. Frank Windibank was one of them.
Although both Frank and his father Richard were born in Portsea the family spent only a limited time in the Borough, much of the rest being spent in Bramshott, near Farnborough. That is where Richard was taken shortly after his birth by his parents James and Mary Windibank and where Richard grew up and eventually married Emily who was from the area. They had their first child, Margaret, in 1880 and then disappeared from the documentary records until they surfaced in Southsea for the 1901 census when they were living at 229 Somers Road. The census records that by this time they had five more children, Mary, Lillian, Richard, Frank and Lewis, the last two having been born in Portsmouth.
Nothing is known of Frank's early life except that in 1902 he began two years of education at the Higher Grade School at the northern end of Victoria Road North. After leaving in 1903 he was apprenticed to Copestake & Crampton, wholesale drapers, where he remained until he enlisted in the A.S.C. in 1915. The following year he married Dorothea Heather in Chichester before transferring to the Berkshire Regiment in 1917 and then to the Machine Gun Corps at Grantham, whence he was drafted to India, November, 1917.
He was stationed at Quetta with the 270th Company, and was with them on the Afghan Frontier as late as 1919 by which time he had been promoted to Sergeant. On November 30th, 1919, he embarked at Karachi for home on H.M.S. Soudan, but was taken ill with influenza on December 3rd and died on December 16th of pneumonia. He was buried at sea, about 200 miles east of Gibraltar.
Further Information
The photograph above is taken from a memorial booklet published by Southern Grammar School from which extracts also appear above.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website lists Sergeant Frank Windibank, (118372), Machine Gun Corps, 270th Company, date of death, 16/12/1919, age 31, remembered on the Hollybrook Memorial, Southampton. Son of the late Richard and Emily Windibank, of 229, Somers Rd., Southsea, Hants; husband of Dorothea Eleanor Windibank, of 10, Eastgate Square, Chichester.
Frank Windibank is remembered on the Southern Grammar School WW1 Memorial and on the Cenotaph. He is not listed in the 'National Roll of the Great War'
Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton is unique in that it records the losses of persons serving in the air and land forces who were lost, or buried, at sea. Those in the Commonwealth navies are remembered at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham whilst those in the Merchant Navy are remembered at Tower Hill.