CORPORAL 7298, HARRY LAMBERT, 7TH BATTALION EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 1ST JULY 1916.




Ilkley born Harry Lambert was serving with the 7th Battalion The East Yorkshire Regiment on the 1st July 1916. The battalion occupied the reserve trenches behind the 10th West Yorkshire Regiment just north of the village of Fricourt. At 7.30 the West Yorkshires advanced against the German lines. that whole morning the battalion struggled forward against intense enemy fire. The 10th West Yorks suffered 710 casualties the highest of any battalion that day. Ignoring the military maxim "never reinforce failure", Harry Lambert and his comrades in the East Yorkshires were ordered to into the attack. At 2.30pm they rose from the British front line and began to walk towards the enemy positions. They had gone just a few metres when they were cut down by withering machine gun fire. The attacked was called off, but not before 137 men had become casualties. Twenty year old Harry Lambert did not return to the British lines, but lay dead in no-mans-land. Before the war young Harry lived with his parents at 4 Golden Butts Road and had worked first as a clerk at Ilkley Brewery before gaining a similar position at Pickersgill's Brewery in Pontefract. Corporal Harry Lambert is buried in Fricourt New Military Cemetery and is remembered on Ilkley War Memorial



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