Wilfred Powell Meredith was born on 20th November 1894 in Mildenhall, Suffolk. In 1911, he was living in North Terrace, Mildenhall, and his occupation was shown as a baker, two years later, on 13th November 1913, he was employed at St Audry’s Hospital as an attendant.

On 2nd September 1914, Wilfred received three months’ notice from the hospital, having committed a disciplinary offence. Two days later, he left and enlisted into the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was assigned to the 88th (1st East Anglian) Field Ambulance Territorial Force.

The 88th Field Ambulance were sent to Warwickshire for training in preparation for their deployment to France. Unbeknownst to them, this was to change and they were sent to Gallipoli instead; in mid-March 1915, Wilfred and the 88th Field Ambulance embarked from Avonmouth for the journey to the Greek island of Mudros and on to Gallipoli. On the 25th April, they landed at Cape Helles and were involved in the fighting until they were evacuated to Egypt, over the nights of the 7th and 8th January 1916.

Wilfred and the 88th Field Ambulance regrouped in Egypt and were based at Suez New Camp where, on 10th March, they received orders deploying them to France. On the 11th they boarded the HMT Warilda and sailed through the Suez Canal to Port Said, where they remained berthed for a couple of days. Their journey to Marseilles restarted on 14th March and the field ambulance arrived there five days later.

After a three-day train journey, Wilfred was now on the Somme at Bellancourt, billeted in the chateau. A note in the war diary on 24th March simply says “Snow Storm” – a far cry from the heat of Egypt less than two weeks before.

On 1st July 1916, the 88th (1st East Anglian) Field Ambulance were in based at Acheux, in support of the 88th Brigade of the 29th Division, when the Battle of the Somme commenced. In 1917, Wilfred was in action in the First, Second and Third Battle of the Scarpe during the Arras Offensive, he then moved with the field ambulance to Flanders and fought in the Battle of Langemarck, The Battle of Broodseinde and The Battle of Poelcapelle. After this, they moved south for The Battle of Cambrai.

In 1918, the field ambulance were back near Ypres and, in April, were based at Wieltje when the German army started Operation Michael. A manoeuvre planned to force the British army out of Ypres to the coast, effectively putting them out of the war. On 10th April, the 88th Field Ambulance was based in Bailleul and, the following day, they started to receive a large number of casualties. Their morning began with forty stretcher cases which increased to over seven hundred and fifty cases of all types by the end of the day.

The conduct of the unit during this period was recorded with the field ambulance’s war diary entry of the 19th June 1918 stating that, “Six Military Medals awarded to members of the unit for good service during operations around Bailleul”, one of which was to Wilfred Meredith.

After the war was over, Wilfred returned to England and, it appears he resumed his former career as an asylum attendant as, in 1939, he was working at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton, as a male mental nurse.

For his war service, along with the Military Medal, Wilfred received the 1914-15 Star, the British War and Victory Medals.