Search results for Courcelette.

22 September 1916 : Capt James Knowles Bertram

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Parents, Scottish born Dr Thomas Bertram and New York born, Scottish, Jean (née Knowles). James was their only child.  James was a student in medicine at McGill University and the Royal Military College of Canada prior to his enlistment. He had also seen four years service in the Militia by the time of the outbreak of war. Enlisting at Toronto…


5 October 1916 Pte Nelson Pierce

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Nelson was the youngest of the nine children born between 1877 and 1896 of Moses (a beekeeper) and Salome Pierce.  Nelson became a beekeeper, like his father, and was working in this trade at the 1911 Census when he was 15.  Nelson enlisted at London, Ontario on 1 November 1915. By October 1916, Nelson was serving on the Somme front. Having …


10 August 1918 : 916855 Corporal Harry Cecil Ellis

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Born 6 September 1891 in Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire, their fifth child, the son of George and Zenobia Ellis of Parnell Road, Clevedon, Somerset.  At the April 1911 Census, the 18 year old Harry, now a grocer, lived at the imposing 18 Hill Road, Clevedon with 9 others, most of whom, including the Head of the House were drapers and milliners.…


For the Fallen - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in many lands

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Whilst it is unimaginable for any battlefield tour not to include at least one cemetery, the sad fact is that all too often many commercial tours degenerate into simple ‘ABC tours’ (‘Another bloody cemetery’) which follow a predictable list of cemeteries and specific graves. Obviously these graves have a story attached but the range and variety of …


Harry Lauder: The World's First Musical Superstar and Broken Parent of the First World War

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“Have you news of my boy Jack?" Not this tide. "When d'you think that he'll come back?" Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. Rudyard Kipling’s poem about his fallen son is one of the most well-known expressions of parental pain of the Great War, but few were more open about their grief at the loss of a child than ‘The World’s First Musical S…