John William Hallinon

This name is on the St Mark's War Memorial, Kennington Oval, London SE11

J. W. Hallinon

(John William Hallinon)

(Hallinon, J. W.)

Service no 723200

Serjeant, London Regiment, 24th Battalion

Killed in action on 22 August 1918

Remembered at Bray Military Cemetery, Somme, France and at St Mark's Church

Information from British Army WWI Service Records, 1914-1918

In January 1919, about five months after her husband was killed in the Somme, Emily Rosetta Hallinon wrote to the Records Office. Where, she asked, was her husband's ring, wristwatch and pipes? She felt these items would have been with him "to the last". No doubt she was thinking of his legacy to his only child, William Henry Hallinon, who was then only 10 and growing up fatherless.She can have had no idea of conditions in the trenches, of the devastating action of the bombs and missiles that may have blown her husband to pieces or conceived of the possibility that her husband's body lay where it fell or was looted for the items she wanted back. Maybe those missing items were buried with Hallinon by colleagues fearing that they would fall into the wrong hands. The Army had managed to set aside Serjeant Hallinon's discs, diary, pocket book and letters for return to his widow. We will never know whether Emily got these items back.As with many others, we know little of Hallinon but an outline of his life. He was born in about 1883 in Balilincolig in County Cork, Ireland and was working as a bank messenger in London.He and Emily married on 11 October 1914 at St Mary Magdalene, Southwark.They had one child, William Henry Hallinon, born 1910.Hallinon had previously served in the Army, and rose quickly in the ranks from Private to Lance Corporal to Corporal to Serjeant.There are some puzzles, though. Why, for instance, did they declare on the 1911 census that they had already been married for four years? How can this be so, if they married in 1914? Was it to legitimise their child? Emily declared herself a widow. Was this the truth? Emily's given name was Grett or possibly Grout. A Rose Emily Grout married George Irom King on 21 May 1899 at St Matthew's, Brixton, but I can find no trace of this man.

Whatever the truth, poor Emily had suffered the loss of her partner twice before the age of 35.