A. E. Waymark
Service no. 40762
Private, Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment), 15th Battalion
Enlisted at Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire
Killed in action on 26 November 1916, aged 37
CWGC: “Son of Mrs S. A. Waymark, of 38 Heyford Avenue, South Lambeth Road, London.”
Remembered at Faubourg d’Amiens Cemetery, Arras, France

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920

Details on Albert Edward Waymark are scant but bring to mind a vivid picture. We know that he was 5 feet 2¾ inches tall and weighed 9½ stone. He measured 38 inches around the chest, which he could expand by a further 2 inches. He stated that he was a concrete worker, and was 36 years and 113 days.

He was assigned to the 15th (Service) Battalion (Nottingham), a bantam battalion for troops under the normal regulation minimum of 5ft 3in.

Waymark joined the British Expeditionary Force on 18 July 1916. During that month, the battalion took part in the fighting for Arrow Head Copse and Maltz Horn Farm and for Falfemont Farm, on the Somme. 

After he was killed in action on 26 November 1916, his mother, Sarah Ann Waymark, living at 38 Heyford Avenue, South Lambeth, received his medals but no effects.

Information from the 1911 census

In 1911 Albert Edward Waymark, 32, was boarding with the Shephard family at Donington-on-Bain, a small village near Louth in Lincolnshire. Waymark was born in Clapham. The host family, Frederick (also a bricklayer’s labourer) and Louisa Shephard, had lost six babies in their marriage. Only one, Ivy Shephard, 11, survived. Waymark had been in Lincolnshire since at least 1901, when, aged 21, he lived with in Wigtoft, Lincolnshire, again boarding. The 1891 census shows Waymark living with his parents, William H. Waymark, a valet, and Sarah A. Waymark, at 9 Stamford Buildings, South Lambeth Road.