Second Lieutenant Arthur Donald Chapman
Serving with the 1/5th Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment,
Territorial Force.Killed in Action 1st July 1916 Age:
23
Arthur Donald Chapman was born in the July/August/September quarter of
1892. He was the son of Albert Chapman of Coalville, Leicestershire, a
commercial traveller who was born in 1863 and his wife Clara, nee Shenton, born in 1862,
in Leicester. In 1901 the family home was 12 Herrick Road, Loughborough.
Arthur had a brother, Albert Rowland, who had been born in1891 in
Leicester. His five sisters, all born in Loughborough, Leicestershire, were Kathleen
Mary, born 1894, Clara Doris, born 1896, Olive Marjorie, born 1899, Adeline Shenton,
born 1900 and Phyllis, born August 1903.
Arthur Chapman was educated at the Loughborough Grammar School and in
April 1911 the family had moved to 29 Burton Street, Loughborough, but he was
employed as a boot and shoe trade student and was residing as a boarder at 218
and 220, Kettering Road, Northampton with Mr William Chamberlain, a surgeon,
and his wife, Grace.
Arthur was working in South Africa when he answered his
country’s call and enlisted with the 1st 5th Battalion of the North
Staffordshire Regiment, where he gained his commission and was popular with the
members of the Battalion. On the 1st July 1916 the North Staffords took part in
a diversionary attack at Gommecourt and Arthur was reported missing then killed
in action, aged 23. His personal effects are recorded as £7 9s 10d plus £35 5s.
Second Lieutenant Arthur Chapman is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial
to the missing in France, Pier and Face 14B and 14C, where his age is recorded
as 24, although he had not quite reached his twenty-fourth birthday when he
died.
© Dr Karen Ette
Sources:
Doyle, Michael, Their Name Liveth for Evermore: The Great War Roll of Honour for
Leicestershire and Rutland (Billingborough, Michael Doyle, 2009)
The National Archives
The Loughborough Roll of Honour: http://www.loughborough-rollofhonour.com/page37.htm
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