L/Cpl Phillip ‘William’ Evans (1885 – 1915)

Phillip Evans was born Phillip Dowsett in the Malling Union Workhouse near West Malling on 18 April 1885. He was the illegitimate son of Mary Dowsett, a domestic servant living in East Peckham, and named after his late maternal grandfather. Life for a single mother in a rural community would have been hard, and unsurprisingly, it was only a short time before Mary returned to the workhouse with her child, resident between 3 November 1885 and 11 March 1886. At some point during the following year, Mary fell pregnant again and went to stay with family in Southfleet, where Phillip became brother to a sister named Elizabeth. It seems likely that Mary met a labourer from Wrexham named Henry Evans while working on a local farm, and she formed a family unit with him, eventually taking Henry’s surname (though no evidence exists that they ever formally married.) After a spell at the Thanet Union Workhouse in Minster, then the Medway Union Workhouse in 1896, Henry took Mary and her two children to the Sevenoaks area, probably searching for work, eventually moving to the Claygate Hop Houses near Crouch at the turn of the century. Henry fathered three children with Mary between 1897 and 1901, and by the age of 14, Phillip began working as a mate with horses. On 22 March 1909, Henry suffered a stroke and was admitted to the workhouse infirmary to recover, but tragically died on 9 April. By 1911, Mary and her children had moved into the home of her son-in-law, Henry Merritt, at Hill View in Basted. Henry, born John Henry Merritt in Maidstone, worked in the Basted paper mill as a rag sorter and married Phillip’s sister in Plaxtol several months after her stepfather’s death.

When hostilities with Germany broke out in 1914, Phillip was lodging with the Green family in New Barn, Borough Green. Like thousands of other young men, he rushed to enlist in the first few weeks of the war, visiting the recruiting office in Tonbridge, where he signed up with the 6th (Service) Battalion of the Royal West Kents – a unit raised in Maidstone as part of Kitchener’s First New Army.

After training in Colchester, Purfleet, Hythe and then Aldershot, the battalion left for Folkestone on 1 June 1915 and embarked for France and Flanders, where they took over a relatively quiet section of the line at Ploegsteert ‘Plugstreet’ Wood at the end of the month, remaining there until September.

On 25 September, the New Army units carried out their first big offensive at The Battle of Loos. Phillip’s battalion arrived in the sector on the 30th, eventually entering the front-line trenches on the night of 5/6 October. Two days later, the West Kents received orders to attack a section of the British front line known as Gun Trench. The position had become partly occupied in the centre by the Germans, and they needed to be removed. Shortly before the advance started, the enemy began an extremely heavy bombardment on Allied lines, cutting through all signal wires; however, despite this, the assault still went ahead with two bombing parties working their way along the trenches from both flanks and two platoons in A Company (which included Phillip) assaulting from the front over open ground. A preliminary Allied bombardment failed to silence the Germans, who were significant in number, well dug in and opened up with their machine guns as soon as the West Kents began moving forward. The main assault failed, and without any form of communication between the companies, the attack unravelled, costing the battalion over 100 casualties, which included 12 killed and 39 missing, most of who were in A Company. Tragically, Phillip numbered among the missing.

Lieutenant Hatton of the battalion wrote to Mrs Green:

I am writing to acknowledge your letter of 22nd, addressed to the Commanding Officer, and in reply, regret to have to inform you that No. 160 Lance-Corpl. Evans, of my Company, was reported wounded and missing the 8th of October, and that since that date his body has been found. He has been buried. I am sorry to have such bad news for you, but I might add that he did his duty well on that day, and as he always had done previously, and led his section very gallantly against the enemy.

Sadly, Phillip’s grave was lost before the end of the war, and he is commemorated on the Loos Memorial. In a double blow for the Evans/Merritt families, less than a month after Phillip was reported missing, his brother-in-law William Thomas Merritt (usually known as Thomas) died of wounds at a casualty clearing station in Chocques.