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Pte. Frederick William Preddy
British Army 18th (2nd City) Btn. Kings Regiment (Liverpool)
from:Masborough
(d.16th June 1918)
Fred Preddy was reported missing in action some time between 19th and 21st March 1918 by his sister Mrs Emily Whitchurch of St. James Place, Mangotsfield who wrote to the authorities in order to establish his whereabouts.
On 21st the Battalion's War Diary simply states “4:40 a.m. Enemy attacked. 4:45 a.m. “Man Battle Station received” yet no mention of men wounded or killed. It was eventually confirmed by the Red Cross that he had been taken as a Prisoner of War by the Germans on 25th March (presumably in the fighting on the same day?) while the German records show he was captured on 28th June at Ham in the province of Limburg, Belgium.
He was admitted to the German No. 3 War Hospital at Chapelle with an embolism caused by a 'ham shot' (a gun shot wound to his upper thigh) and after extensive treatment he died on 16th of June 1918 in the Limburg P.O.W. Camp, north west of Frankfurt. His body was brought in from the German extension of the Communal Cemetery (Soldatenfriedhof No.2) and re-interred in La Capelle–En-Theirache-Communal Cemetery in the small town of La Capelle in the Aisne Department of France. The German authorities wrote to Frederick's sister on 28th of September 1918 advising her of her brother's death. Frederick Preddy is commemorated on the Cenotaph in Clifton Park, Rotherham and also in the Rotherham Postal Sorting Office.
