Eli Chamberlain

Memorial: Olveston

Regiment: Machine Gun Corps

Medals: British War Medal, Next of Kin Memorial Plaque 1914 - 1921, Victory Medal

Rank and number: Private 99473

Parents: George and Rachel Chamberlain

Marital status: Married

Home address: Briar Cottage, New Road, Olveston, Bristol

Date of birth: 09/10/1893

Place of birth: Newport, Monmouthshire

Date of death: 21/08/1917

Buried/Commemorated at: Mendinghem Military Cemetery (IV. F. 21.), West-Vlaanderen, Belgium

Age: 23

Further information:

It is known from the census of 1901 that an Eli Chamberlain, born in Castle Cary in 1871, married Elizabeth, born in 1870, in Sherborne, Dorset. Their family comprised William, Alfred and Edward, always known as Teddy, and they came north to live on Pilning Street where Eli was an oil dealer. Eli had a brother George and a sister Kate. Kate had crossed the Bristol Channel to live in Newport, having married James Nash. When George’s wife died he was left looking after his three sons so they all moved to Newport to live with Kate and her family. Nearby lived Rachel Griffiths whom George married and who bore him a son on the 9 October 1893, naming him Eli after his uncle. George subsequently died and Rachel and her son Eli came to Olveston to live in part of the house now known as Briar Cottage in New Road. Rachel Chamberlain was involved in running the oil business in Olveston after the end of the Great War using a hand-pulled cart. After her death in 1938 Teddy took over the oil round and based the expanded business at Glendor on Awkley Lane, initially using a horse drawn cart and eventually a motor vehicle

Young Eli enlisted in Bristol, was assigned to the Gloucestershire Regiment and identified his mother Rachel as his next of kin. He was subsequently transferred to the 248th Company of the Machine Gun Corps, which was part of the 33rd Division. His unit was attached to the Infantry; the more heavily equipped units, or ‘Henry’ branch, became the foundation of the Tank Corps as these new weapons of war were deployed on the Western Front. Of the activities of the 248th Company, little is known except that they were on our front line in the vicinity of Nieuport on the Flemish coast when the Germans attacked on the 10th and 11th of July 1917. The function of the Machine Gun Corps was to support the battalion to which they were attached, and trench records show that there was intermittent firing by the gunners into the enemy front line and communication trenches. On being wounded, Eli Chamberlain was eventually taken to the 46th Casualty Clearing Station at Proven being operated by the 1st/1st Wessex and known as Mendinghem. Eli died of his wounds on the 21st of August 1917 and was buried in the Mendinghem Military Cemetery just outside Poperinghe. It was in Poperinghe that the Reverend P B H ‘Tubby’ Clayton started Toc H (military shorthand for Talbot House) — the house being preserved as a museum to the troops who lost their lives in that area of Flanders. William Chamberlain, who was four years younger than Eli, returned from the Great War and lived in Olveston

By kind permission, this information is based on the following source(s):

Forces War Records and CWGC