156th (Oxfordshire) Heavy Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery
Arthur Thomas Wilsdon was born at Hawling, near Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire on 11 April 1892. He was the son of Thomas Wilsdon (1862-1903) and his wife Selina Jane (née Kite: 1867-1926). It appears he was one of nine children (six boys and three girls). His father was a shepherd and in 1901 the family was living at Stallons Farm, Newent.
Arthur became a farm labourer after leaving school and in 1908, aged 15 and nine months he joined the Royal Navy as a Boy Second Class (number J134) and trained at the permanently moored HMS Impregnable in Devonport Harbour. His stay was very short, from 11 January until 6 June 1908 and his reason for leaving is not known.
At some point between leaving the Navy and enlisting in the Army he moved to Oxfordshire and became an attendant at a County (Mental) Asylum at Sandford Road, Littlemore. He enlisted in the Army on either the 1 or 11 November 1915 (his Service Record indicates the latter), stating that he was unmarried and (curiously) that he had served in the Royal Navy for eighteen, rather than eight, months.
His stay in the Army was also comparatively short. Having been posted to 156th (Oxfordshire) Heavy Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery, with the number 8989, he was discharged on 13 March 1916. This was before the battery was deployed on the Western Front in mid-1916. He was discharged as he was ‘considered as not likely to become an efficient soldier’. This was due to the diagnosis of a valvular disease of the heart (pulmonary murmurs) and that he had ‘a kind of angina attack occasionally: the murmurs have been more evident since an attack of influenza’.
He was awarded a Silver War Badge to indicate discharge from military service (the record for which gives his enlistment date as 1 November 1915). Following discharge, he appears to have taken up residence at 12 Whitfield Street, in the Barton district of Gloucester (he is shown as a resident there in the 1918 Electoral Register). It is not known if he was able to find employment.
Gunner Arthur Thomas Wilsdon’s cause of cause of death on 4 September 1920, age 28, is not known but was presumably linked to his heart condition. He was buried in Gloucester Old Cemetery, where a standard CWGC headstone marks his grave.
Researched by Graham Adams 9 March 2020