2nd Lieutenant, 1st/9th Battalion Manchester Regiment.
Killed in Action 19th June 1915, Gallipoli, age 20.
Remembered on the Helles Memorial, Turkey.
Former student of Engineering.
John was born in 1894 at Ashton-Under-Lyne to Lieutenant-Colonel Dr .Herbert Wade, a chemist and commander of the 1st/9th Battalion Manchester Regiment, and his wife Ada. John attended Ashton Secondary School, entered the University in 1911 and gained a B.Sc. Engineering in 1914. He was a member of the University Officer Training Corps from 1911 to August 1914. He was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment on 2nd September 1914.
On 1st July 1915 a newspaper reported that John had received a hand injury and was in hospital, as was his father who had also been wounded in May at Gallipoli. It was later reported that John was missing after a night attack. With his wrist still bandaged he had entered a trench full of Turks and fighting with great courage accounted for a number of the enemy. What happened after that was unclear, but it was hoped he had been taken prisoner. A Major present at the same action wrote that John (known locally as Jack) was “a very gallant boy, one of the coolest and gayest in danger, and I much fear that the idea of putting up his hands would not occur to him until it was too late.”
Sources show that John may have been a Lieutenant at the time of his death.