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Driver Arthur Leonard Weeks, 17322, C Battery, 106 Brigade Royal Field Artillery - one of six brothers who served
20/07/2025
First World War Army United Kingdom POZIERES MEMORIAL
By Mark Bailey

United Kingdom

Driver Arthur Leonard Weeks
850913
Arthur Leonard Weeks was born in 1896 at Bovey Tracey, in Devon, one of nine children of William, a mason, and Jane Weeks of Virginia Cottage in East Street. He was educated at the Church School, sang in the church choir and, at the time of the 1911 Census, was working as a news boy.
Bovey Tracey parish church choir, March 1911. Arthur (3rd boy chorister from R) was one of four of its members to die from enemy action during the Great War. His younger brother Leslie is in the middle of the group of six boy choristers to L of the vicar (copyright unknown)
Arthur enlisted in November 1914 at Exeter and disembarked in France on 28 July 1915, but was thrown from a horse while dispatch riding later that year and evacuated to Woolwich Hospital. By mid-1917, there were six Weeks brothers serving in uniform, his older brother Sidney dying of disease in Bombay Military Hospital, in India, on 26 September 1918 as a private in 1/1st Kent Battalion.

Arthur was killed in action on 4 April 1918 by a bomb (i.e. grenade) explosion during the Battle of the Avre, aged 21, and is commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial in France as well as the parish church and civic war memorials at Bovey Tracey.