Lieutenant Walter Edward Worsdale Cottle

Thank you to John Callcut for letting us reproduce the following information, taken from his book: A Village at War. Newdigate in World War One.

Walter Cottle was born in Dulwich on the 31st January 1895 and his sister Aileen followed three years later. They were the the only children of Walter H. and Agnes Cottle. He was educated at Dulwich College. The family together with their servants moved first to Kenley and then to Leigham Park Road in Streatham. Agnes died in 1913; Walter Snr. married Cicely Selby in 1915 and shortly after moved to Melton Hall in Newdigate. Both father and son worked for the Lloyds Register and undertook sea voyages together on ocean liners in the years just prior to the war.

When war broke out Walter Jnr. was rejected as medically unfit. He therefore took up work for the Royal Automobile Club, driving his own car for many months in the service of Lord Salisbury’s Division at Chelmsford. The open-air life did him good and he eventually passed the doctor and joined the Artists Rifles (28th Battalion London Regiment) in January 1916. His Officer Training Corps training at Dulwich, together with the knowledge he had picked up during the manoeuvres in the Eastern Division, made him very proficient, so that in less than a month he was sent to the Guards and gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in September 1916, and attached to the 1st Guards Brigade, Machine Gun Company. He was present at the battle of Pilckem Ridge, north of Ypres, and fell on the 31st July 1917. His name is remembered on Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, and the Crawley and Ifield War Memorials.

Born	Dulwich, South East London
Son of	Walter Herbert Cottle of Melton Hall, Newdigate and the late Agnes Muriel Cottle
Regiment	Grenadier Guards, attd. Guards Machine Gun Company
Date of Death	31st July 1917
Place of Death	Passchendaele, Belgium
Cause of Death	Killed in Action
Age	22
Memorial	Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Ypres, Belgium

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