Berwick Advertiser 02/06/1916

Orpington All Saints

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born at the beginning of 1889 in Wooler, Oswald was the younger son of North Eastern Railway platelayer Oswald Skeen and his wife Mary (nee Macdonald). His older siblings were James and Mary, also born in Wooler. Two years later at the time of the 1891 census their address was The Summit, Alnwick Moor, a cottage owned by the NER.

Father Oswald left the railway and moved to live in Back Lane, Wooler where he found work as a carter and the boys attended the Church School. On leaving school young Oswald became an apprentice tailor with Luke Atkinson of Glendale House and having served his time left home and took lodgings in Loadman Street, Elswick whilst working in Huttons in Mosley Street, Newcastle. Two years later he emigrated to Canada, arriving in Nova Scotia on 21st June 1913, having sailed from Glasgow on the SS Parisian, and he settled in Montreal where he joined a local militia group.

Among the first to answer the call for volunteers, on 25th September 1914 Oswald enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force at the newly opened camp at Valcartier, Quebec, and naming his father in Wooler as his next of kin he became Private 24997 in the 13th Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada). Sailing almost immediately as part of the first Canadian Contingent the battalion arrived in England on 16th October and spent the winter in training on Salisbury Plain. February saw them arrive in France, although they did not enter the trenches until mid April when they felt the effects of the first German gas attack of the war.

At the end of July 1915 whilst the battalion was in reserve Private Skeen was punished for being absent from a working party and breaking away from camp whilst under arrest. Over the Christmas period of 1915 instead of being on duty near Steenbeck Oswald was in a nearby Stationary Hospital for two weeks with scabies.

1916 saw the Battalion involved in training and in patrols and raids whilst in the trenches, but no major fighting until June in the Battle for Mount Sorrel, and then on to Courcelette in September. It was during the preparations for the taking of Regina Trench at the beginning of October that Lance Corporal 24997 reported sick at Albert and after a brief stay in hospital at Wimereux found himself invalided to England with pleurisy. Oswald was in Lord Derby War Hospital in Warrington for three months and was then sent for convalescence to the Canadian Red Cross Home at Bushey Park for a month before being posted to the 20th Reserve Battalion at Shoreham, Sussex.

Reduced to the ranks for being drunk and disorderly in May 1917, the following month Oswald rejoined 13th Battalion in France and fought with them in the taking of Hill 70. He remained on the front line with the Battalion, having two months' respite whilst posted to GCHQ Reserve in May 1918, and then relieving the 19th in July near Arras.

During the fighting at the Battle for Amiens on 8th August 1918 Private Skeen received a shrapnel wound to his back and was removed from the battlefield and after ten days was in serious condition in hospital at Rouen. Once again evacuated by hospital ship, by the end of the month he was in King George Hospital, Stamford Street, London where his medical notes read “shrapnel ball lodged in dorsal vertebrae, seriously ill, paralyzed”. His condition remained unchanged and after three months he was moved to the Canadian Military Hospital at Orpington, Kent. Noted as “condition improving” in early May, just four weeks later with a temperature of 103 degrees he was “dangerously ill”.

Private Oswald Skeen died from his wounds in Orpington Military Hospital on 21st June 1919.

Oswald Skeen is remembered in Wooler on W68.01, W68.02 and W68.03

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual War Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Skeen