Private William Dickinson

Private William Kendal Dickinson, 1st/4th ( Territorial ) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in action in Belgium on 26th April 1915, aged 19. during the Second Battle of Ypres.  He was the son of James and Hannah Dickinson of Longhirst and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Flanders, Belgium. He fell in a rushed and unreconnoitred attack in support of the Canadians on German positions in the village of St Julien by the 4th and 6th Battalions of the Fusiliers. The attack failed with heavy casualties. An impressive Memorial was raised to the fallen of the 50th ( Northumbrian ) Division of which the Battalion was part until July 1918 when it was reduced to cadre and assigned to lines of communication duties. It was erected near the village of Weiltje in the Ypres Salient where nearby the Division had fought its first action of the War on 26th April 1915 only days after landing on the Continent.