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Private Hubert John WALLIS (32569)
C Company, 14th (Service) Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1st Birmingham City) Date of birth: 19th January 1887 Date of death: 26th October 1917 Killed in action aged 30 Commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial Panels 23 to 28 and 163A
Hubert John Wallis was born at Bexhill in Sussex on the 19th of January 1887 the son of Dr Fredric Michael Wallis MRCS JP, a surgeon) and Mary Emily (nee Willett) Wallis of Barrack Hall, Bexhill. He was educated at Lancing College where he was in News House from September 1901 to July 1905. He was a member of the Football XI from 1903 to 1905 and was appointed as a House Captain in 1904. On leaving school he farmed sheep with his brother Arthur Henry Wallis at Tiniroto, Gisborne near Auckland in New Zealand. Following the outbreak of war he returned to England to enlist on board the SS "Omrah" and landed at London on the 13th of October 1915. He was living at an address at Hindley in Greater Manchester when he enlisted at Piccadilly in London as Private 17634 in the 17th (Duke of Cambridge's Own) Lancers but later transferred to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. On the 26th of October 1917 the 14th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment was detailed to attack the Polderhoek Chateau and the ground approximately 300 yards to the east and to the south of it. At 4am they made their way forward following white tapes which had been laid out to help them find their way in the dark. At 5.40am they went over the top into no man's land in good order and moved into the wood on the way to their objectives. Little was heard until the wounded began to trickle back when reports were received of good progress but of heavy enemy fire on the right of the attack. A and D Companies met stubborn resistance from the German defenders of the Chateau and from the pillboxes surrounding it. Despite this setback they managed to overcome a pillbox on the immediate right of the Chateau, advanced a further sixty yards and dug in to consolidate their gains. Meanwhile a bombing party from B Company of the 15th Warwicks managed to clear the Chateau itself after heavy hand to hand fighting. As soon as the Germans realised they had lost the Chateau they saturated the area with artillery fire and by mid morning they were seen massing for a counterattack. By this time all the Lewis guns and rifles of the Warwicks were choked with mud and their ammunition was coated with slime. To add to this, many of the men were nearly waist deep in mud and they were in no position to repel a counterattack. The decision was made to withdraw to their original positions and by 11.30am the Germans had reoccupied the Chateau. Casualties suffered by the battalion between the 24th and 27th of October 1917 were 78 officers and men killed, 8 died of wounds, and 162 wounded.

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