Christopher or Willis as he was known was born at Gunnerside in 1885, the youngest of the three sons of John and Ann Wharton, a local lead miner.

 

Aged 16 Willis had moved with his cousin John to live with their widowed Aunt in Lambeth, London to try forge a better life for themselves.  John was working as a shipping clerk and Willis as a draper's apprentice.

Willis volunteered for the army and joined a London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) and by September 1917 had risen to the rank of Second Lieutenant in his Battalion. On October 26th across atrocious ground conditions they took part in the second attempt to take the ruined village of Passchendaele and the ridge it was on. The attack failed (it would not be until November 6th that the village would fall to the Canadians) and in the opening fighting, Christopher Willis Wharton was killed by shell fire. His body was not retrieved from the oozing treacherous morass of mud that was the battlefield they fought over and his name is recorded on the Tyne Cot memorial.

Katie Awdas