SECOND LIEUTENANT FRANCIS SAMUEL MILLER FRANCIS was mortally wounded and invalided to the UK, but eighteen days later he died in London on 7 June 1917. He was born towards the end of 1877 in the Manor House, Old Malden, Surrey to Horatio William (b1828) and Emily Frances (b1837) Miller, who were married on 8 February 1876. Horatio was a lamp manufacturer. Francis was the eldest of five sons, and there was also a daughter, who all grew up in Malden. He took up electrical engineering and set up his own business. Horatio died in Brest, France on 10 October 1900 and it might be that the family had moved to that area in or soon after 1897 as there is no census record of a family home in Britain in 1901 and 1911. In 1901 Francis, now an engineer and merchant, was boarding in Stoke-on-Trent and in 1911 he was a visitor to Bedford, where Rosa Gwendoline Packe lived. Later in 1911, when he was 33, he married Rosa, 34, and after the marriage, they moved to Hillcrest, Station Road, Chorleywood. At some point after 1911 Francis' mother, Emily, moved to Harpford, Devon. In 1916 married men aged 31-40 became liable to conscription and Francis was called up. In view of his technical training he was probably awarded a commission; he was assigned to one of the three Wessex Divisions of the Royal Engineers as a 2nd Lieutenant. The Royal Engineers maintained the railways, roads, water supply, bridges and transport - allowing supplies to the armies. They operated the railways and inland waterways, maintained wireless, telephones and other signalling equipment, making sure communications existed, and they grew into a large and complex organisation. From October 1916 the Royal Engineers worked underground, constructing tunnels for the troops in preparation for the second Battle of Arras in 1917, which lasted from 9 April to 16 May. Beneath Arras itself there was a vast network of caverns called the boves, consisting of underground quarries and sewage tunnels. The engineers came up with a plan to add new tunnels to this network so that troops could arrive at the battlefield in secrecy and in safety. The size of the excavation was immense. In one sector alone four Tunnel Companies of 500 men each worked around the clock in 18-hour shifts for two months. It is not known precisely where Lieutenant Francis Miller was wounded on 20 May with a serious gun-shot wound in his right leg, but he was swiftly transferred to the Hall-Walker Hospital for Officers, Sussex Lodge, 27 Sussex Place, Regent's Park, London. Sadly, however, gangrene had set in and his leg was amputated. The operation caused heart failure and he died in Sussex Lodge on 7 June 1917. His funeral was in Pinner on 11 June and he was buried in Paines Lane Cemetery, Pinner, Grave E 75. Later that year his mother died. Rosa moved out of Hillcrest to live in Chestnut Cottage, Pinner, the home of her sister and her husband. She never married again and died in Pinner in 1972, aged 96. Francis' death was her second tragedy as on 4 September 1916 her son, Robert Fordyce Miller, also a 2nd Lt, serving with the 9th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment, had been killed, age 27.