Pte. Sydney Weighell

Sydney was born and he enlisted in Northallerton, and he was educated at the Grammar School. He lived in Arncliffe Terrace, Northallerton, but the end of the War his father, Isaac, had died and his mother had moved to Collie Post Office, Collie, in Western Australia.

Before the War Sidney worked for his cousin, Mr Albert Barker, a farmer at Hewitson Hill.

He had been working in a Casualty Clearing Station before being sent up to the front line. He was posted "Missing in Action" on 25th March 1918 during the height of the German Spring Offensive, but was susbequently found to have been taken prisoner.

He died, aged 21, after being held as a prisoner of war at Friedrichsfeld in Germany, less than two weeks after the Armistice had been declared. The Cemetery in which he was finally laid to rest was greatly enlarged after the Armisitice, though why this cemetery was chosen as his final resting place is unclear. It seems likely that he died during his journey home from Friedrichsfeld. Such was the upheaval and chaos in Germany at the end of the War that many Allied prisoners of war actually made their own way back home from the places in which they had been held.