Arthur Chrisman was the elder of the six children of Lewis and Mary Chrisman, of number 4, Martin Hill Street in Dudley; his parents were the caretakers of St. Edmund’s School.
The report of Arthur's death in the Dudley Herald newspaper, tells us he had been a chorister at St. Edmund’s for many years, and that he was employed by Mr. E.C. Lewis of the Challenge Tea Stores in Dudley; he volunteered for the Army during Dudley’s great recruitment drive of March 1915 with two of his fellow assistants. An attempt to enlist in 1914 had been unsuccessful.
Arthur arrived on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of a reinforcement draft on the 15th of September 1915, and was with the battalion when they moved to Mesopotamia; he served in 'D' Company.
Arthur Chrisman was killed on the 5th of April 1916, aged 22, in the Action at Falahiya (during the attempt to relieve the siege of Kut al Amara, where a large British and Indian force had been encircled by the Ottomans) and his name appears on the Basra Memorial to the Missing.
A bachelor, Arthur's name is inscribed on the walls of Dudley's civic war memorial in Priory Street.
(This story is based on his entry in the book “Dudley’s 1914-1918 War Memorial and the Men commemorated – 2nd Revised & Expanded Edition” by J. B. E. Hale.)
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