Category Archives: Army

Albert Gilbert Allen

Alfred Sutton School War Memorial, Army, Cambrai, Commemorated name/s, Royal Berkshire Regiment

Albert Gilbert Allen
Private 45498
8th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment

 

 Allen AG photo  Allen AG Rcem com

Albert Allen was aged 18 years when he was killed in action on 23rd October 1918.  He was the youngest  of seven brothers serving “Their King and Country”.  The notice of his death appeared in the Chronicle on 6th December 1918.  His parents lived at 56, Filey Road.  Albert’s name is commemorated on the Vis-en-Artois memorial panel 7.  The memorial was erected to the memory of those who fell in the advance from 8th August 1918 to the Armistice 11th November 1918.

 On the 22nd October 1918 the 8th Battalion moved to Le Cateau, as part of the 18th Division which was due to attack the following day.  We are told in “Their Duty Done” Colin Fox et al that “by late evening the men were in their assembly positions east of the village facing L’‹vÃque Wood.  The ground over which the attack was to be made was rough grassland with no connected trench systems but with strong German defensive positions organised in depth around machine gun posts……………..Zero hour was 1.20am on 23rd October.  The Royal Berkshires’ assembly point was a deep railway cutting east of Le Cateau from where they would advance onto the second objective.  Enemy shelling here caused 15 casualties…..a temporary dressing station was blown in by a gas shell…….At 1.15am the companies moved out of the cutting…..A creeping barrage moving forward at the rate of 25 yards a minute supported the attack……..At day break the enemy began to retire and Captain M Wykes took the leading companies of the two battalions and rushed the road, capturing over 30 light and heavy machine guns.  The advance continued and the second objective, a line some 1,500 yards beyond the first…..was taken by 8.30am and held throughout the day”.  The total advance for the day was some 8,000 yards.  Casualties for the day were reported as one officer killed, two officers wounded, other ranks – 19 killed, 1 died of wounds, 67 wounded and 3 missing.  Albert Allen was one of those killed in action.

William Adnams

Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments, Primitive Methodists' Memorial

William Adnams
Gunner 129930
99th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery

Division 71
Extension

ADNAMS W CEM

William Adnams died of gas shell wounds on 28th June 1916.  He was the son of William and Emily Adnams, of Reading.  William was the husband of Lizzie Adnams, of 55 Spring Gardens, Whitley, Reading.    He is commemorated on the family grave. Number 18121.  The Berkshire Family History Society classification is 71J13.

The notification of his death appeared in The Standard July 13th 1918 commented, “He was a dutiful son and devoted husband and beloved by all”, together with the following poem.
Not now, but in the coming years.
It may be in a Better Land,
We’ll know the meaning of our tears,
And then sometime we’ll understand.

 William Adnams was aged 32.  He was buried in Aire Communal Cemetery, pas De Calais.  Location III.E.5.  Aire was a peaceful centre used by Commonwealth forces as corps headquarters.  Burials in plots II.III.IV. rows A – F, relate to the fighting of 1918, when the 54th Casualty Clearing Station came to Aire and the town was, for a short time, within 13 kilometres of the German lines.

 *Further research is required to discover the service career of William Adnams.

Ernest George Edward Adams

32nd or 35th Div. Signal Co. RE, Alfred Sutton School War Memorial, Army, Somme

Ernest George Edward Adams
Pioneer 103144
32nd Division Signal Company Royal Engineers

ADAMS EGE

Ernest was the only son of Mr and Mrs Ernest Adams of 97, Addington Road.  Mr. Leonard Sutton, once the Mayor of Reading, raised both the 32nd and 35th Signal Companies, initially based at Wantage Hall.  He appealed to the young men of Reading to enlist and one such person was Ernest Adams.  Born in Reading he had attended Redlands and Wokingham Road Senior schools.  He had been employed in the Berkshire Insurance Committee offices.   Ernest was a well known and keen footballer, he played for a local team, the Corinthians, in the position of goal keeper.   

Ernest was only 17 years old when he was killed.  Theoretically he was too young to have served abroad and it is not clear when exactly he enlisted.  It is possible that he gave miss-information to the recruiting sergeant as many young men, eager to do their bit, often did.  With his father and four uncles also serving in the army Ernest was obviously keen to join them.  However, in spite of his age, we are told that he excelled at signalling and was with a sergeant engaged in new aerial signalling before he was killed. He must have been serving for some time in order to have gained sufficient training and experience.  Ernest was with his battalion on the Somme when he was killed on the night of 4th July 1916.  He would have experienced the allied shelling in the week before the ‘big push’ and would have been aware of the gains and losses made in those first few days.  He met his death, only a few weeks before his eighteenth birthday, when a shell burst near him, he lived for only three minutes after being hit.  The same shell injured many others.  

Ernest is buried at Blighty Valley Cemetery, Authuile Wood, the Somme.  Grave location I. B. 2. 

The cemetery was begun in July 1916 and used continuously until November 1916. The cemetery originally contained 212 graves in Plot I; it was not used again until after the Armistice when 784 graves were brought in from the battlefields and smaller cemeteries to the East, most of whom fell on the 1st July.  Authuile Wood, near the River Ancre,  was situated right at the heart of some of the most severe fighting which took place during the July 1916 Somme battles,  the missing dead of those battles being commemorated on the near by Thiepval Memorial to the Missing.  A cheery face looks out from his photograph and the “In memoriam” of 1917 refers to him as “Ern” a “dear and only son”.