Basil Owen Ellis

Basil Owen Ellis (known as Boe) was born in London in 1889 to Herbert Owen and Bessie Clara Ellis, and christened in Walthamstow. He had four younger sisters.

From 1909 to 1913 he served in the Honourable Artillery Company but resigned in 1913 to go to India. After the outbreak of war he volunteered for the army in India on 27 November 1914, in Madras. He briefly became a Corporal in the Indian Army Corps’ Motor Cycle Corps where he was a dispatch rider. In October 1915, he transferred to the Royal Field Artillery in England. His artillery unit, the 7th London Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, was re-designated in 1915 as the 237th (CCXXXVII) Brigade part of the Territorial Force 1st Line, in turn part of the 47th 2nd London Division. As Boe transferred from the Indian Army to the brigade in October/November 1915, it is possible he was involved with the battles of Vimy Ridge and various stages of the battle of the Somme in 1916. His war poetry suggests he saw service both in the trenches and in Palestine. A poem he wrote on the eve of the Battle of Beersheba (31 October 1917) means he was in Palestine by then. He also wrote a poem about the SS Manitou which served as a troop transport between 1915 and 1918 and on which he must have travelled there.

He spent his working life in Madras where he met Anne Hadaway. They married in 1922, and had four children – Henry Owen (Harry), Anthony Richard (Tony), John Oliver (Joe) and Jane. They lived in India until 1950 when they retired to East Dean, Sussex, England.

He worked, at least for the latter part of his Indian career, for Gordon Woodroffe, a firm exporting leather (skins and hides), and was an established enough figure in Madras for the Swedish government to ask him to be their consul. He was awarded the Order of Vasa, it being made clear this should be returned after his death. Sure enough, following his death in 1974, a request for its return arrived in East Dean.