Evan Robert Oliver May was killed in action on this day in 1916
Evan May was born in 1880 in Northleach, Gloucestershire, the son of Robert (a farm labourer) and Olive May née Hambling.
At the time of the 1881 Census, Evan was the youngest of six children. His two older brothers, Albert and Ernest, aged 15 and 12, were working as a groom and a ploughboy, respectively.
By the 1891 Census, the family had moved to Kempsford near Cirencester. Only the three younger boys were living at home. His older brother, George, was a farm labourer; Evan and his younger brother, William, were still at school.
In October 1910, Evan married Emily Smith in Cirencester. They had their first child, Victor Macdonald May, a few months later in May 1911.
They lived at 110 Cricklade Street in Cirencester, where Evan worked as a baker. Evan and Emily went on to have two more boys, Leslie Dennis in 1912 and William Robert in 1915.
At the outbreak of war in 1914, Evan, aged 32, enlisted in one of the New Army battalions - the 10th Gloucestershire Regiment. The Battalion went to France in August 1915.
He was killed in action on 31 August 1916 during a bombardment of the trench he was in near High Wood, during the 'Battle of Pozieres'.
The Battalion War Diary records "Moved up into front line system in HIGH WOOD. Two normal days spent in holding the line with constant enemy shelling of the support trench (BLACK WATCH ALLEY)".
Evan May has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
Emily remarried in December 1916 to a man named Harvey and moved to Dollis Hill Farm, Cricklewood. Her new husband died the following year. In 1921, in Cirencester, she married a man named William Godsell with whom she had three more children from 1922 onwards. At some point, they divorced and, by 1939, age 51, she was married to a man named Harold Lloyd, a crane driver. They lived with five of her children, two by Evan May and three by Godsell.
Evan's younger brother William served in the RAMC and survived the war. His older brother George, age 35 at the outbreak of war, remained in domestic service in Hassocks.
23627 Pte Evan Oliver Robert May, 10th Bn. Gloucestershire Regt.