Category Archives: Royal Berkshire Regiment

George E. Thatcher

Army, Commemorated name/s, Royal Berkshire Regiment, Somme

George E. Thatcher
Private 18098
1st Royal Berkshire Regiment

 Division 40

Thatcher GE photo  CIMG2200

George Edward Thatcher, known to his friends and family as Jack,  was the husband of
Mrs Sarah Thatcher (nee Clarke), of 6, River Road, Reading.  He is commemorated on a small scroll stone, on the grave of one of his children, number 10263.  Only the initials G.E.T. and Jack are written on the headstone but a CWGC search revealed his full name and details.  The 1911 census indicates that he was a tin solderer at the tin works and he had three children – Lily, Cyril and Evelyn. Sharing their five room family home were his sister in law and three brothers in law.

 George enlisted on 25 March 1915, serving first in the 3rd Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment before moving to the 1st Battalion. He arrived in France in December 1915.  He was killed in action on the 14 November 1916, when the battalion were involved in the later stages of the Somme battle.  He was killed taking a trench.  Jack Thatcher is buried in Munich Trench British Cemetery, Beaumon Hamel, location C 31.  The cemetery contains many men who were killed in the same action and Jack lies near Fred Gray who is also commemorated in the Reading Cemetery and who died on the same day.

 George Thatcher was 37 when he was killed. The Chronicle of 8th December 1916 records that Jack was “killed instantly”, that he worked at Huntley, Bourne and Stevens before the war.  He left a wife and five children. The author has visited Munich Trench Cemetery which is rather out of the way on Redan Ridge and the visitors book which at the time went back to 1975  revealed that family members visited the grave in1992 and 1997.

 

Gordon Leonard Stapley

Army, Registered War Grave, Royal Berkshire Regiment, St. Laurence's Church

Gordon Leonard Stapley
Private 41492
6th Royal Berkshire Regt.

 Division 54

Stapley grave

 

Gordon Leonard Stapley was the only son of Mr W J Stapley, of Queen Victoria St. Reading.  He had attended Kendrick School, later amalgamated to form Reading School.  He is buried in a registered war grave and commemorated on a kerb stone of the family grave.   His name also appears on the special memorial in the War Plot.  His grave was lost but the author found the grave and after much digging revealed the kerbstones which had sunk below ground level, although nature will doubtless take its course and the grave may be lost again.

 Gordon Stapley was very artistic and was by trade a stone mason, he worked for his father who had a business designing and making memorial monuments.   His last work was the War Shrine at Knowl Hill Church.  Here to the years and nature have taken their toll and lichens have obscured the 197 names of those soldiers, sailors and airman who were killed and are commemorated on the memorial.

 Gordon Stapley joined the Berkshire Yeomanry in January 1917 and was later transferred to the 6th Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regt.  He was sent to the front and 24 hours after his arrival was wounded by a shell which landed two yards away from him, causing compound fractures of the right arm.  He was sent to Fazakerley Hospital, Liverpool, and appeared to be progressing satisfactorily when pneumonia developed.  He died on 31st October 1917, aged 25 years.  His was a military funeral.