Private Llewelyn Hillier 3034 the son of Edward (1854-1923) and Martha (Pike 1862-1943) Hillier, of Point Aux Gauls, Lamaline, Newfoundland. A fisherman, he enlisted 18 August 1916 at St. John’s. Eldest brother John Robert Hillier Sr (1882-1956), Edgar (1885-1932), Lucy (1889-1977), Ellen (Childs 1890-1964), Elizabeth (Reeves 1896-1921), and second youngest, Seaman Henry Pike (1896-1966).
Pvt Hillier Embarked St. John’s on 31 January 1917. Embarked for BEF from England on 12 June 1917, joining D Company of the RNR on 9 July 1917.
Battle of Cambrai
Thirty-two RNR fell on this day, 3 December 1917 in the Battle of Cambrai (1917). Only one of the dead identified and later recovered in December 1919, that of LCpl Thomas Cook MM (FLESQUIERES HILL BRITISH CEMETERY). Son of John and Mary Hannah Cook, of Trinity East, Newfoundland. Nearly two-dozen of these casualties buried as Unknowns of the RNR at Flesquires.
Prisoner of War
Private Llewelyn Hillier missing since 3 December 1917.
Correspondence from Pvt Hillier later received from Gefchrieben (Geshrieben?), Germany. S.B. Kriegslazarett 10 (Sanitäts-Bataillon /Medical Battalion). The German medical unit Kriegslazarett 10 (War Hospital 10) was stationed in Le Cateau-Cambrésis.
THE BRITISH ARMY ON THE WESTERN FRONT, 1914-1918 (Q 3317).
British troops resting on a felled tree near Le Cateau, 25 October 1918.
Private Llewelyn Hillier died in hospital at the Lazarett in Le Cateau, 25 January 1918 (tranverse shot wound in back). Buried by the German Army in known grave No. 984. Total service, 1 year and 161 days. Brothers Pvt Edgar Hillier, Henry and John R Hillier, and a sister Mrs Samuel Reeves.
Le Cateau Military Cemetery
The military cemetery laid out by the Germans in February 1916 with separate plots for the Commonwealth and German dead. It contains the graves of over 5,000 German soldiers, many of whom were buried during the occupation, the rest being brought in from other German cemeteries after the Armistice. A separate plot contains the graves of 34 Russian prisoners of war who died in captivity.
The Commonwealth plot is the site of almost 700 graves and commemorations of the First World War. The majority of the graves in Plots I, III, IV and V those of British dead buried by the Germans, mainly from the battleground of 1914. Plot II contains entirely graves of October and November 1918, eight of which brought in after the Armistice.
