AN EXHIBITION entitled ‘Droitwich and the Somme’ will run from next Friday (July 1) to July 30 at Droitwich Library.
The event is part of the Worcestershire Libraries ‘Somme Project’ which, in conjunction with A Worcestershire World War 100 exhibition, commemorates the centenary of the 1916 battle.
The exhibition focuses on six soldiers from Droitwich who took part in the Battle of the Somme.
One troop featured is Pvt Frank Coker, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
He was born in 1892 in Islington, London, to father William Vince Coker, a Post Office sorter and his mum Mary.
By 1911 Frank was living with his mum who was then a widow and working in Droitwich as a solicitor’s clerk for Jackson Gabb.
On November 22, 1915, Frank was enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Worcester.
The next seven months he spent in training, which included drill, route marches and physical exercise with stretchers, along with lectures in elementary physiology and first aid.
He left Southampton for France on June 19 – one of many reinforcements destined for the Battle of the Somme.
He was posted to the 12th Field Ambulance attached to the fourth division, preparing to attack German positions to the south of the village of Serre.
On July 1, in his first action on the opening day of the battle, Frank was wounded and died of his injuries the following day, aged just 25.
His Captain AE Quinn, writing to Frank’s aunt, said he was hit whilst gallantly doing his duty with a squad of stretcher-bearers. He was carrying a wounded man down a communication trench.
He said although he had only just joined his sergeant had referred him as being ‘most willing, pleasant, cheerful and a hard-worker who was glad to find himself at the front with the prospect of doing good through laborious work under fire’.
The official exhibition launch will take place at 10.15am next Saturday (July 2), including a two-minutes silence led by the Royal British Legion, followed by the screening of the 1916 documentary ‘The Battle of the Somme’, period music and refreshments.
There will also be a free Chatterbooks Reading Group event entitled ‘Flo of the Somme’ from 2pm on the Saturday. Participants aged between seven and 12 will find out about animals taking part in the battle and being given the chance to write their own poetry.
