Grave of Caleb Simmonds Devereux, High Wycombe Cemetery
Caleb Simmonds Devereux
1879 – 1927
I was born in July 1879 and I lived at 17 Upper Green Street in High Wycombe for most of my life. In 1902, when I was 23, I married Ethel Wilkinson in the Wycombe Registration District and I worked as a carpenter for most of my adult life.
I was a Royal Engineer and a sapper during the First World War. I was a part of the 34th Works Company as a sapper, and I may have been a part of the Third Battle of Ypres which was a Belgium campaign for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in Western Flanders.
In late September I was hit by a shrapnel bomb with severe wounds in my head, chest and head and in October 1917 was admitted to the Western General Hospital in Liverpool. I was discharged from that hospital on the 1st October in 1918. I was therefore able to see victory and much longed for peace.
However, in 1927 I died at the age of 48 at my home. The injuries that I received during the First World War contributed to my early death.
My older sister Agnes married Samuel Humphrey and her three sons also served in the Great War. Her son Charles was killed in 1916 and her son Francis died of his wounds in 1929. Like me, he is buried in High Wycombe Cemetery. My older brothers, Francis and James, each lost a son in the Great War too. So our family suffered heavily.
Researched by James Box, John Hampden Grammar School and Sally Scagell, Lost The Plot
