Universities at War

Alan Monk was born in 1893 in Truro, the second son of Mark James Monk, a musician with an Oxford doctorate and organist of Truro cathedral, and his wife Alice Emily. The family was then living in St Clement parish in the city. The 1911 census finds Alan Monk lodging as one of three students at St Gerrans Rectory, Portscatho, preparing for his entrance to St Chad’s Hostel, from where he transferred to St Chad’s Hall at Durham University in the Easter term of 1913 to study Arts. There he held the Wakeford and Marke Wood bursaries. It is not recorded that he passed any exams prior to the war breaking out in 1914. When he enlisted is not known, but on 29 July 1915 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant with the Devonshire Regiment. His medal card indicates he entered France on 29 July 1916, and he won a promotion to temporary Lieutenant on 1 July 1917. He served with both the 8^th and 11^th Battalions, probably serving with the former at the time of his death at Gheluvelt on 26 October 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele. The university’s roll of service records that he had very shortly before been attached to the Royal Flying Corps, but if this is correct it is thought he had not yet transferred and died fighting as an infantry officer. His body was not recovered, and so he is commemorated on the Tyne Cot memorial. He is also remembered on the war memorial outside Coinage Hall in Truro, and in Durham University’s Roll of Service (1920).