Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Leonard Freeman Maule was a tailor, and he and his wife Margaret (nee Turner) lived in Clayport Street, Alnwick. Percival was their first son, born on 16th August 1888, their second Leonard died aged one, and their third son Ernest was born in 1897. Margaret died in the autumn of 1900 and father Leonard moved in with his mother-in-law in Market Street with his two sons. By 1910 Percy was in Canada living and working in Regina, Saskatchewan, where he met and married Lancashire girl Ethel Draper.

On 5th January 1916 Percy enlisted as Private 105830 in “D” Company, 68th Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force; he named Ethel as his next of kin and his occupation as packer. Four months later he sailed into Liverpool on the SS Olympic, arriving on 7th May. After six weeks training he was posted to France and joined the 5th Battalion at the Scottish Lines near Ypres on 1st August.

His overseas service lasted less than two months. On 26th September, during the attacks at Hessian and Zollern Trenches near Mouquet Farm, he was wounded several times. His comrades were unable to reach him due to the vicious fighting, and he spent the night unconscious in no-man's-land before being evacuated to the Casualty Clearing Station at Albert. Four days later he was invalided to England and admitted to Barrington War Hospital in Shrewsbury. Although his wounds were not too bad, he was found to have nerve damage which limited the use of his left arm and a Medical Board recommended that he be invalided to Canada for further treatment.

Home in Regina at the beginning of 1917, he was treated as an outpatient, and underwent surgery to rejoin the damaged nerves of his left arm at Saskatoon. This was unsuccessful and he underwent a further operation in July 1918 in Winnipeg. A Medical Board a year later reported that he remained partially disabled due to nerve damage which prevented the use of his left hand, further treatment would be of no benefit and they recommended that he be discharged as medically unfit.

Percy continued with vocational training, and eventually found work as a bank clerk with the Bank of Commerce in Regina. Notes on file suggest that he continued to receive treatment until at least 1933. He retired in 1951 and moved to Vancouver. He died from kidney failure on 17th March 1971, and was cremated two days later. His wife, Ethel, died seven months later having moved to Burnaby, British Columbia after Percy’s death.

Percy Maule is remembered in Alnwick on A11.27