When Cpl Harry Stillwell was brought home sick and wounded from Gallipoli it was to lead to a reunion with a brother who had emigrated to Canada five years earlier.

Harry Stillwell (pictured left, above) was a trainee electrical engineer with Albert J. Pitkin, plumber and engineer of Church Street, Luton, when he joined the Royal Engineers on September 14th, 1914. He had been through the Dardanelles campaign only to be wounded there on November 15th, 1915. He received treatment at Netley Hospital before being transferred to a convalescent home in Eastbourne.

It was at Eastbourne in August 1916 that he was reunited with older brother Arthur James Stillwell (pictured right). He had been a gamekeeper on the Putteridge Estate before sailing from Liverpool to Quebec on the SS Teutonic in May 1911 to settle in Renfrew, Ontario.

The sinking of the Lusitania and the execution of British Nurse Edith Cavell in Belgium had persuaded him and hundreds of others living in Canada to answer a call to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in February 1916. He arrived back in England with the Canadians in July 1916 as Pte Arthur Stillwell and was stationed at Bramshott, Hampshire.

The Stillwells had had a long association with the Putteridge Estate and later Lilley Manor through the brothers' father, Charles Stillwell. He had been head gardener at Putteridge Bury and then at Lilley Manor over a total period of more than 30 years before he was forced to give up his job through illness.

By the time of the family reunion at Eastbourne, Charles was living at 108 Ashburnham Road, Luton.

[The Luton News: Thursday, August 31st, 1916]