Tolworth pupil lays wreath for great-grandfather who gave up playing for Manchester United to fight in World War I

A Tolworth pupil laid a wreath to commemorate her great-grandfather, who gave up playing for Manchester United to fight in World War I, while she was on a school trip to France last week.

Mollie Linkson, 15, is the great-granddaughter of former football player Oscar Linkson. Mr Linkson was a full-back and played 55 times for Manchester United before signing up to the 1st Footballers Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. The aim of those regiments was to encourage professional footballers and their fans to fight together.

He was killed on July 8, 1916, a week into the Battle of the Somme, at Delville Wood. Tolworth Girls’ School ran its annual battlefields trip to Belgium and France on April 21, and Mollie was asked by Manchester United to present a wreath to remember all of the players who died in World War I.

In addition to Mr Linkson, those players were Alex Turnbull, Bernard Donaghey, Arthur Beadsworth, Arthur Hooper and Thomas Wall. In a small ceremony attended by the 74 students Mollie laid the wreath and a minute's silence was held in memory of the players. On a card included with the wreath Mollie wrote her great-grandfather Oscar was “lost but never forgotten”.

Comments

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <p>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Filtered words will be replaced with the filtered version of the word.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

By posting content on Surbiton.com, you agree to adhere to the following guidelines.

  • Your username and password must only be used by you, keep them safe. If a posting is made using your username and password it will be considered to have been posted by you. If you have a friend who wants to use our site and post messages on the site, show them how to register.
  • Be courteous at all times, inciting racial hatred, posting abusive, obscene, threatening, harassing, defamatory, libellous or sexually explicit material or any material that is found to be offensive is not acceptable and we may suspend your username and password.
  • Retaliating to offensive posts causes more problems for other users on the discussion boards. Just report such messages to us using the Feedback link which is available at the top of every page or the 'report this' link associated with individual postings. We will act on every report we receive.
  • Please respect other people's work and do not post material that infringes copyright.
  • Do not post information that you know to be confidential or sensitive or otherwise in breach of the law. You should only post material that you know to be public knowledge. If you have any doubts do not post it on the site.
  • Never attempt to gain unauthorised access to any area of the site. This is known as hacking and is illegal.
  • Content posted represents the opinions of the author, and does not represent the opinions of Surbiton.com or its affiliates and has not been approved or issued by Surbiton.com. You should be aware that the other participants are strangers to you and may make statements which may be misleading, deceptive or wrong.
  • Spoofing or posing as another user is unacceptable. Anonymous users' postings should always be considered with suspicion.
  • Help keep Surbiton.com a safe place for information and opinion. Please alert us of any anti-social behaviour as described above.
Please note that Surbiton.com does not monitor the comments posted and we are therefore reliant upon users reporting antisocial behaviour.