Captain Bertram Shera WILLS
86th (2nd Northumbrian) Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps

Date of birth: 26th July 1875
Date of death: 19th August 1919

Died aged 44
Buried at Welford Road Cemetery, Leicester Grave 01. U. 300
He was born at Rathmines in Dublin on the 26th of July 1875 the elder son of Surgeon-Major Caleb Shera Wills CB, Royal Army Medical Corps, and Louisa Lucy (nee Holmes).

He was educated at the Junior Kings School from the summer of 1886 to July 1889 and at Epsom College from September 1889 to 1890.

He trained as a doctor at St Thomas’s Hospital, where he was a House Surgeon, and achieved MRCS and LRCP Lond. on the 11th of February 1897. Later in 1897 he became Surgeon to the Leicester Provident Dispensary. Up until 1899 he was Surgeon to the Royal Niger Company and saw service in the Benin Expedition of 1897 for which he was mentioned in despatches. When he returned to England he practiced for a time at Lambeth Road in London. He became FRCS on the 12th of December 1901. By 1902 he had moved to practice at Fremantle in Australia and from 1904, he practiced for a time at Leonora in Western Australia. At the outbreak of war he was living at "Moyleen", Marlow-on-Thames in Buckinghamshire. He was a Freemason and was admitted as a member of the Albert Edward Lodge in Leicester on the 9th of March 1909.

Following the outbreak of war he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 3/2nd North Midland Field Ambulance on the 24th of October 1914. He embarked for France with his unit on the 27th of February 1915, landing at Boulogne. He was evacuated to England on the 14th of September 1915 suffering from trench fever and was passed as fit for general service by a Medical Board which sat at Grantham, on the 17th of December 1915.

On his return to service he volunteered for service in the Balkans and in January 1916 he was posted to 86th (2nd Northumbrian) Field Ambulance who were serving in the Sturma Valley in Salonika. While he was there he contracted malaria and was evacuated from Salonika on the 8th of July 1916. He spent two weeks at Tirge Hospital in Malta before continuing his journey and landing at Southampton on the 13th of August 1916. He was found to be unfit for further service due to malaria and he relinquished his commission on the grounds of ill health on the 9th of January 1917 and returned home to practice medicine at 84 Laurel Road, Leicester.

On the 17th of August 1919 he was driving his car when he was involved in an accident, running over two women, killing one and seriously injuring another. He was found dead in a bed at Laurel Road two days later by his step mother; a bottle of strychnine was by his side.

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