Frederick Vyse Campion

Trooper Frederick Vyse Campion of the Household Battalion (formerly Royal Horse Guards) was killed in action on 12 October 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele. He has no known grave but is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial.

Trooper Frederick Vyse Campion was included in the second memorial service of 1917 held to commemorate the Parish’s casualties at St John the Baptist Church, Hampton Wick, on 14 November 1917. The report of the service in The Surrey Comet dated 17 November 1917 reports that all of the four deceased were former choristers: three at St Johns, the other in Kingston. Of the four men commemorated at the service it is likely that it was Private Albert Wheeler, who grew up in Kingston, who was the chorister there.

His father, Frederick Campion, was the landlord of the Railway Inn opposite Hampton Wick Station from 1908-1914. At the time of the 1911 Census the Campion family comprised Frederick Senior (43) who had been born in Marylebone and Joy Mary Campion (40) from Southall and their seven children. The eldest daughter, Mary Joy Campion (15) had been born in Kingston. Thereafter, sometime between 1896 and 1895 the family moved to Hammersmith- the birthplace of the next five children: Frederick Vyse Campion (14); Winifred Ethel Campion (12); Henry Walter Vyse Campion (10); Florence Edith Campion (9) and Edward George James Vyse Campion (6). Only their youngest child, Arthur James Vyse Campion (7 months) was born in Hampton Wick. Frederick Vyse Campion must have sung in the church choir at some point whilst the family lived in the village.

Sadly, although he was included in the church memorial service, he is not commemorated either on the Hampton Wick War Memorial or on the war memorial in St John the Baptist as by the time the names were collected for the memorials the Campion family had long moved away from the village.

There is a reference in the London Gazette dated 13 September 1945 to the award of a Military Medal to a Trooper Arthur James Vyse Campion (7903708) of the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars Royal Armoured Corps (Hampton). This must have been Trooper Campion’s youngest brother who in 1945 would have been 34. Perhaps the family moved to Hampton at some point after World War 1.