BAYLIS Forbes Warren

Appears on the Army casualties list for Worcestershire.

The following report appears in Berrow’s Worcester Journal, Saturday 15th June 1940:
Died of Wounds
Captain Forbes W. Baylis
Captain Forbes Warren Baylis, of the Worcestershire Regiment, is officially reported to have died of wounds in Flanders.
Captain Baylis, 22 years of age, was the eldest son of Mr and Mrs F. Russell Baylis, Dudley House, Stephenson Terrace, Worcester. He was a director of the well-known Worcester printing house of Ebenezer Baylis and Son Ltd., of which his father is chairman, and of the subsidiary company of M. T. Stevens, Ltd., Malvern.
Captain Baylis was educated at Bromsgrove School, where he was in Elmshurst House. He was in the School O.T.C. From Bromsgrove he went to the Birmingham School of Printing.
After finishing his course of studies there he was for 12 months, in 1936, in Germany, where he worked alongside Nazi youths of his own age and older ones in the works of Wilh. Ruhfus, a well-known German printing firm in Dortmund, Westphalia.

Friends in Germany
There he came into close contact with the Nazi machine and became familiar with its grip on German youth.
He made many friends in Germany.
The writer recalls many talks and friendly arguments with Forbes (as Captain Baylis was known to his host of friends), in which he would reveal a considerable insight into the magnitude of the Nazi movement. He was fully aware of the military preparations.
“They say it is a safeguard against Communism,” he once said on his return from Germany, “but it seems pretty big for that purpose only.”
He took a commission in the Territorials two or three years before the outbreak of war. “We shall have to do something, just in case,” were his words then.

All-Round Sportsman
Captain Baylis was proficient at many sports. He was a member of the Worcester Rugby Club and played for both the “A” and 1st XVs after leaving school, first as a forward and later as a wing-threequarter in which position he became a formidable adversary. Of fine physique, he was a strong swimmer and an intrepid diver.
He was a member of the Worcester Gold and Country Club.
Mr and Mrs Baylis have received a letter from a B.E.F. Chaplain, the Rev. R.J.E. Dix, who was attached to a Field Ambulance and was in the hospital to which Capt. Baylis was admitted. The padre was able to inform them that their son had been buried in Belgium.
The padre stated that Captain Baylis was too badly wounded for anything to be done to save his life.
Captain Baylis joined his father in business in 1937, and in 1938 became a director of the firm, and was in charge of the works when he was called up last September.
He was engaged to Miss Chris Holloway, a daughter of the late Mr W. Holloway, motor engineer, of Sidbury, Worcester.
The report includes a photograph of Forbes Baylis.

Captain F.W. Baylis, c/o Bromsgrove School appears on a list of men from the Bromsgrove District killed in the 1939 – 1945 war, provided by the Reverend C.W. Banner, “Tuffley”, 19 Stourbridge Road, Bromsgrove, dated 29th June 1950.