PRIVATE ARTHUR FREDERICK JOHN WAITE
THE QUEEN'S ROYAL WEST SURREY REGIMENT
14TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 20
BURIED: BAGHDAD (NORTH GATE) WAR CEMETERY, IRAQ
Surrey Advertiser 20 October 1917
"Official information has been received from Mesopotamia that Pte. A. Waite 1/5th Queen's Regiment, whose home is at Box Grove, Westfield, is dangerously ill with gun-shot wounds in the head. He joined the Army in the second week of the war, and was severely frost-bitten at Gallipoli in 1915. After several months in hospital in Malta, London and at North Camp, he went to India in July, 1916, and thence to Mesopotamia. Before joining the Army he was with Mr. W. Pendle, White Rose Lane, as under gardener."
The newspaper report was out of date, Arthur Waite had been dead for a week. Born in 1897, Waite was 17 - as his mother says, 'but a boy' - when he enlisted in August 1914. He served with the 1st/5th Battalion The Queen's (West Surrey) Regiment, which at the time of his death was in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. Without any specific information, I would suggest that Waite was wounded in the Second Battle of Ramadi, 27-29 September, when the British reported 995 casualties following the capture of the town.
Arthur Waite, his mother's 'sweetest flower' and 'chiefest joy' was the eldest son of her first marriage. She had two daughters from this marriage and a son from her second marriage who would have been 8 when Arthur died.