Private James George Pedrick
24th (1st Wessex) Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC)
Killed in Military Service
Date of Birth: 6th May, 1893
Place of Birth: Teignmouth, Devon
Date of Death: 17 February 1915, in France, aged 21
Buried: Buried at the Longuenesse (St. Omer) Souvenir Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France .
Remembered on the Royal Army Medical Corps 24th Field Ambulance Memorial in Exeter Cathedral.
Awarded the 1914 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal
Private James (Jim) George Pedrick, age 22.
Jim was born in Teignmouth in December 1893 and baptised on 6 May 1894, the only son of James and Alice Pedrick of East Teignmouth.
He attended Hele's School, Exeter leaving there in April 1900.
The 1901 census showed him living with his parents at 5 The Triangle, Teignmouth.
By 1911 he was shown working as an ironmonger's assistant and living with his parents and two young sisters at Courtney Place.
Royal Army Medical Corps Cap Badge © IWM (INS 8067)
Jim was serving with the 24th Field Ambulance, 1st Wessex Royal Army Medical Corps, army service number 1961. He arrived in France on 5 November 1914 and died from meningitis on 17 February 1915.
Buried in Longueness Cemetery St. Omer, France. Remembered on Seafront Memorial and St Michael’s Church Memorial, Teignmouth.
Grave Inscription reads: “Gone But Not Forgotten”.
A Royal Army Medical Corps Field Ambulance
A Field Ambulance was not a single vehicle, but an entire mobile hospital that served in the combat zone.
Casualties from a Scottish infantry battalion of 77th Brigade being evacuated along a communication trench outside Salonika, February 1916.© IWM (Q 31794)In the First World War, at the Front Line in battle there were often vast numbers of casualties requiring immediate treatment.
The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) operated a system that immediately addressed a patient's critical injuries near the Front, then evacuated him to a medical unit in a safer area.
To achieve this goal the RAMC had units consisting of 10 officers and 224 men. The entire company was called a Field Ambulance.
Motor ambulances and horse-drawn ambulance wagons of the RAMC collecting wounded on the Western Front © IWM (Q 9177)
The men were detailed as stretcher bearers, nursing orderlies, ambulance drivers, cooks, sanitation crew and to manage and distribute stores and water etc. The unit was divided into three equal sections, each of which could be self-sustainable, with its own tented areas, men and equipment.
Stetcher Bearers in WW1 © IWM (Q 5935)
Each Field Ambulance had to be moved to where the combat was most intense and set up there.
Men of the Army Supply Company (ASC) were attached to assist with transport.
A Field Ambulance had 66 horses and 23 wagons. After the first year of the war transport included 7 motor vehicles and a maintenance wagon.
A full strength Field Ambulance unit in the First World War had a "capacity" for 150 casualties. In times of intense battle the unit would often treat a great many more.
RAMC officers and men were unarmed, they did not carry weapons (or ammunition). Over 6,873 RAMC personnel were either killed in action or died of wounds in WW1.
Through the work of the RAMC 1.6 million wounded men were returned to the firing line to fight again.
RAMC personnel giving a wounded man water from a petrol tin in an abandoned trench. © IWM (Q 9177)
The 24th (1st Wessex) Field Ambulance and Teignmouth
The 24th was part of what is now called the Territorial Army. It was based in Exeter, Devon and trained part-timers in the same instruction manuals, exercises and drills as the regular RAMC.
In 1910, the unit opened a detachment at Teignmouth, a sea-side town about 14 miles from Exeter, Devon. The detachment slowly grew in numbers so that at the start of the First World War several Teignmouth men served in the ranks of 24th.
In September 1914, it was designated 1st Wessex Field Ambulance and joined the 8th Division, British Expeditionary Force, then sailed to France arriving at Le Havre on the 6th November 1914.
British soldiers arrive in Le Havre, France. © IWM (Q 51472)
Le Havre is a port in France which during the First World War was used as a base for storage and as a transport hub .
1.9 million British soldiers passed through Le Havre en route to the Western Front which was further North.
On the 12th November the 24th arrived at the Front where they spent the winter focusing on diseases and the medical problems caused by the cold and wet conditions.
Troops coming out of a communication trench in the snow. © IWM (Q 4695)
“Four inches of snow on the ground and snowing up to the 22nd (November) it was nearly impossible to sleep with only one blanket.
Barn we occupied last week blown up by shell fire. Had over nine hundred sick and wounded in a week.
The men having come straight from India &c (Cairo, Eygpt) went right into the trenches, owing to the shortage of troops, the snow and intense cold was playing havoc with them, and the bulk of the frost bite cases were quite helpless with swollen feet and had to be evacuated”.
War Diary of Albert House
Sergeant-Major of the 24th Field Ambulance
That is when the 1st Wessex Field Ambulance lost its first man.
Private James Pedrick of Teignmouth contracted meningitis whilst treating a patient and died in the hospital at St Omer on 17 February 1915.
