Wednesday 4 February 2015

Died on this day, 1917 - Arthur Wolfe



Arthur Wolfe was the Head Boy at King Edward VI School, Southampton. Known as "Snowball" because of his shock of blond hair, he was the school's top academic, as well as a regular in the cricket XI.
He enlisted in 1915, joining the Royal Naval Division, and soon found himself in Gallipoli. Like so many others in that ill fated campaign, he was evacuated with dysentery. He was so ill, in fact, that after what must have been a horrendous sea journey back to England, he did not return to active service until December of 1916.
By this time, the RND had seen action in the Ancre offensive at the end of the Somme campaign, and Wolfe's science teacher at KES, Owen Hobbs, had been killed there in November. He too had enlisted in the RND in the spring of 1915. Wolfe found himself in the Ancre valley too, preparing for the push towards the village of Miraumont. He died in that action, attacking a German strong point. The letter home to his parents states that he was "buried where he fell", but as was common in the Great War, his grave was lost, and his name appears on the Thiepval Memorial.
 He was 20 years old.

His Headmaster back in Southampton, James Fewings, retired towards the end of the war, emotionally wrecked by seeing so many of his charges march off, never to return. The loss of Head Boy Arthur Wolfe hit him particularly hard. He set up a Wolfe Prize for Mathematics (he had turned down a place at Oxford to study Maths to enlist), a prize that the school still awards
every year.