Name
SYDNEY JAMES BALDWIN
1896
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
23/10/1915
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Driver
8842
Royal Field Artillery
29th Div. Ammunition Col.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 /15 Star, British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
MIKRA MEMORIAL
Greece
Headstone Inscription
He has no Headstone he was lost at sea. He is commemorated on the Mikra Memorial to the missing in Greece.
UK & Other Memorials
Wigginton War Memorial
Pre War
Sydney James Baldwin was born in 1896 in Wigginton, Herts, son of William Baldwin a Farm Labourer (B 1867 in Drayton, Bucks) and Lydia Baldwin (nee Gurney) (B 1870 in Wigginton, Herts) he was one of three children.
1901 Census records Sydney aged 4, at school, living with his parents and elder brother Horace 7, in Wood Row, Wigginton, Herts.
By 1911 now aged 14, Sydney had left school and was working as a Farm Labourer, living with his parents, brothers Horace 17, and Lewis 9, at Clay Hill, Wigginton, Herts.
Wartime Service
Sydney enlisted in Bedford, posted to the Royal Field Artillery with the Service No. 8842. His medal card indicates he arrived in Egypt in April 1915.
On 19th October 1915, the Ammunition Column of the 29th Division, Royal Field Artillery consisting of 10 Officers, 439 other ranks, 491 mules, 50 horses and all there equipment left Alexandria, Egypt for Salonika aboard the 7,057 Ton British Troopship "S. S. Marquette". The total ships compliment was 741. Also aboard was the No. 1 Stationary Hospital consisting of nurses, doctors, officers and other ranks totalling 191 personnel. On 23rd October 1915, 36 mile's south of Salonika in the Aegean Sea, the ship was hit by a torpedoed on her starboard side. The torpedoed was from the German U-Boat U-35 under the command of Waldemar Kophamel. The ship sank within ten minutes with the loss of 167 of the 741 personnel on board, Sydney being one of them also 10 of the 36 nurses from the Royal New Zealand Army Nursing Service part of the No. 1 Stationary Ambulance were also lost.
Sydney's body was never recovered, he is commemorated on the CWGC Mikra Memorial in Greece.
Additional Information
The value of his effects were £4-5s-10d, Pay Owing and £6, War Gratuity, which went to his father William.
Acknowledgments
Stuart Osborne
Stuart Osborne.
