John Oates died at Camp Sherman, Ohio, on April 15 1919, he had just returned from Europe where he been serving in the 112^th Engineers.................

Until spring 1916 recruitment into the British Army to fight World War One was voluntary. One of the big recruitment initiatives to encourage volunteers was what became known as the Pals Battalions................

Sir Clifford Cory, at a public meeting in St John's Hall just after the armistice said that the Base had been the means of “destroying and damaging many submarines around the coast from Mount's Bay to Hartland Point”. The vessels of the Base had convoyed no fewer than 11,000 vessels to and from France.........

Penzance seemed to be full of marching men in late January 1915 and inevitably there was a certain amount of competition.

Urgent military training requirements in 1915 saw men travelling all over the country to attend training camps....

The outbreak of WW1 saw an urgent need to grow the small, professional, British Army which was now committed to war on four fronts against the huge conscript armies of the opposition.

A boy born in 1895 could be said to have been born at an unfortunate time. By 1914 he'd be 19 years old old and a prime candidate to be a soldier in World War One. This was the destiny fate had in store for Willie Tonkin....