Captain John Harry MEERS MRCS LRCP (Lond)
Royal Army Medical Corps attached to the 1st Battalion Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Date of birth: 11th September 1885
Date of death: 9th October 1915

Died of wounds aged 30
Buried at Noeux-Les-Mines Communal Cemetery Plot I Row K Grave 17
He was born at Lee in Kent on the 11th of September 1885 the elder son of James Blackader Meers CB, a civil servant with the Inland Revenue, and Ada Josephine (nee Weakley) of 41 Lancaster Gate in London.

He was educated at Shirley House School, Watford from 1894 to December 1898 and at the King’s School Canterbury from January 1899 to July 1902 where he won a scholarship.

On leaving school he entered St Mary’s Hospital, University of London on the 1st of October 1902 where studied medicine. He became LRCP in 1910 and was entered on the Medical Register on the 1st of February 1910. He served as House Physician at St Mary's Hospital and later as Medical Officer for the Wesleyan and General Assurance Society. He also served as Assistant Medical Officer at the Islington Infirmary before entering general practice at 47 Wandsworth Bridge Road in South London in 1912.

Following the outbreak of war he was commissioned as a Temporary Lieutenant the Royal Army Medical Corps on the 16th of August 1914 and embarked for France on the 26th of August. He was attached to 11 General Hospital at Boulogne and was later appointed as Medical Officer to the 10th Vetinary Hospital. He was later posted to the 141st Field Ambulance and acted as Assistant Sanitary Officer at Boulogne. He was promoted to Captain on the 16th of August 1915.

He was attached as Medical Officer to the 1st Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, their previous Medical Officer, Captain Edward Jocelyn Nangle LRCP RAMC, having been killed in action on the 26th of September 1915. He joined the battalion in the field at Hill 70 on the 2nd of October 1915 where he took over from 2nd Lieutenant MacCormack RAMC, who had been Acting Medical Officer to the battalion following Nangle's death.

On the 7th of October 1915 the battalion took over a section of the old British front line in front of Mazingarbe where the shelling was unusually heavy. They spent the following day deepening and strengthening their new positions under occasional shellfire. During the day they were ordered to relieve the 9th Battalion King's Liverpool Regiment and they completed this move by 6am the following morning. The trenches in their new position were dangerously shallow and, once again, the men set about deepening them, all the time under shellfire.

At around noon John Meers left his trench to attend to a wounded comrade and was himself wounded when a bullet broke his arm. Due to heavy enemy fire he lay in an exposed position for some time before he could be rescued. As he was carried to the edge of the trench he was wounded in the side by shrapnel from the explosion of a shell. He died on a stretcher while on his way to the dressing station at about 8pm.

When he was buried, his coffin was carried by four of his fellow officers and the procession consisted of every man from the battalion who could be spared from duty.

He was married at Fulham in 1914 to Cecil Gladys (nee Webb later Stiles), of 5, Trebovir Road., Earl's Court, London.

His medals were sold at auction in London in December 2012.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission record his death as being the 10th of October but this conflicts with other sources, including the war dairy, which record his death as having taken place on the 9th of October 1915.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Shirley House School.
 

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