Second Lieutenant Owen Edmund Almond

Owen Edmund Almond was born in Wimbledon on 1st April 1878, the son of Rufus W Almond and Jane Jeater Almond. His father was a brewer’s traveller. At the time of his birth the family was living at 7 York Terrace, Pelham Road, Wimbledon. By 1891, when Owen was 14, the family had moved to Hothaw Cottage in Wimbledon and he had 3 brothers and two sisters. He was the second son and still at school.

By 1901 the family had moved to 242 Haydons Road Wimbledon but Owen, now 24, had enlisted as a sergeant in the Second Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment and was based in Gibraltar. Two years later he had been posted to Ceylon and India. When WW1 started his battalion was stationed in Bangalore in Southern India, one of the 52 British Regular Army Battalions then serving in the subcontinent and Burma. On the outbreak of war British Territorial Army Units were sent out to replace them and Owen’s battalion was posted to British East Africa, now Kenya, which had German East Africa (now Tanzania) on its southern border.

On 3rd November 1914 Owen’s unit landed in Tanga and attempted to capture the port but were unsuccessful. Four days later they sailed to Mombasa and were quickly in action protecting the Uganda Railway Line from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. The unit’s war diary shows that show that Owen, now a second lieutenant, was one of 14 members of the battalion that died fighting at Bura on 29th September 1915.

Second Lieutenant Almond is buried in Voi cemetery ¼ mile east of Voi railway station in Kenya. Plot IV. B. 2. One hundred war burials were made in this cemetery between August 1915 and December 1917. The inscription on his grave reads "AND THEY SHALL BE MINE ... IN THAT DAY WHEN I MAKE UP MY JEWELS" MALACHI IV. He is commemorated on the North Wall of the United Apostolic Church (formerly St Peter’s Church) in Wimbledon.

His brother John Lancashire Creswell, who died on the Somme in 1917, is also commemorated at the church.