Old Hill, Cradley Heath, Sandwell

Image: Totnal Bridge at Old Hill.

Wilfred Cutler lived with his parents, William and Joannah, at 25 Lion Road, Old Hill, one of several terrace houses leading up to the canal basin, where the barges loaded coal and Totnal bridge stood. From the age of 13, he had been apprenticed to a Bolt and Rivet maker. His father was a boatman, his four older brothers working in local coal and tube-making industries. Opposite was an old inn, beyond that the disused Lion colliery. Industry on all sides; from their back garden, looking to the south, a patch of trees called Cherry Orchard, then the slag heaps of Haden Hill No. 1 pit, also fallen into disuse, a timber yard nearby, a chain works, brick works, iron works. A branch of the Great Western Railway ran past at the bottom of their road, with a footbridge over the line, and a bumpy track that led along the foot of the rail embankment to Wrights Lane. From this man-made landscape “cloaked in an umbrageous shade” as local writer David Christie Murray called it, Wilfred leaves to join the army, never to return.

The houses on Lion Road were demolished by the 1970s, when the Waterfall Lane Industrial Estate was later built, and is only marked today by a path through thick woods up to the canal banks where Totnal bridge still gives passage.

Ordnance Survey map of 1905 shows Lion Road, and the surrounding area.

Today a shaded path from Wrights Lane follows the ascent of the former Lion Road up to the canal .

The first months of 1916 brings conscription for single men over the age of 18 who are not working in industries essential to the war effort. Wilfred joins the Worcestershire Regiment and undertakes months of repetitive training. The Worcesters are bound for Egypt and Mesopotamia. In 1918 they are then despatched to North Persia to support the Dunsterforce, marching to occupy Baku, where a few thousand troops find themselves defending the oil capital, along with the North Staffs, against the approach of a 14,000 strong Ottoman Army of Islam.

Facing overwhelming odds, on 14 September they evacuate by boat back to Enzeli, but before long, as the Armistice was signed with Turkey, they returned to occupy Baku in November 1918. Oil production was quickly reinstituted by the British and troops were charged with escorting the oil trains to the Black Sea port of Batoum. For most, it’s an unhappy task, their tenure there only enlivened by occasional concert parties and sports competitions. They grumble to the Quartermaster about the black bread, a vile mixture of flour, dirt, husks, and straw, mixed with sourdough. There’s no faggots and peas, groaty pudding or fish’n’chips in these parts, though caviare is plentiful and cheap, piled up in the warehouses, and issued to the troops. Dysentery is rampant, and the influenza epidemic arrives. All the sick and wounded who can be moved are taken back to Mesopotamia in motor and horse-drawn ambulances.

In January 1919, some lads received their demobilisation papers and journeyed back to Constantinople, via Batumi. But Wilfred Cutler will not live to hear his name called out by the Colour Sergeant. He died in hospital in Batumi in February 1919, aged 21, cause not recorded.