PRIVATE 12049 HENRY (HARRY) BUCK, 9th BATTALION WEST RIDING REGIMENT (ILKLEY PALS COMPANY).


PRIVATE 12049 HENRY (HARRY) BUCK, 9th BATTALION WEST RIDING REGIMENT (ILKLEY PALS COMPANY). KILLED IN ACTION 19th DECEMBER 1915.


Rumour's about the death of Ilkley Pal, Private Henry (Harry) Buck, had circulated in the town before it was officially announced. The Pals wrote many letters home and sometimes these would arrive faster than official communications announcing a soldiers death. Harry Buck was killed on the 19th December 1915 whilst his battalion was serving in the Ypres Sector of the Western Front. The Dukes were in reserve that day but a sudden attack by the Germans meant that they were ordered to reinforce the front line. As they moved out of Ypres along the Menin Road Harry's unit came under artillery fire. The shells were a mixture of high explosive and gas rounds. Both sides had been using chlorine gas, either fired by artillery or released across the lines from canisters, for some months. However, gas helmets had limited the effectiveness of chlorine and so the Germans developed phosgene gas which was more potent. This was the first use of phosgene gas against the British whose gas helmets provided only partial protection. It is reported that Harry was killed instantly by a nearby shell explosion. Harry was the illegitimate son of Mary Baldock born in 1894 in the hamlet of Rise in the East Riding of Yorkshire. His mother eventually married and Harry assumed the surname of his stepfather. He came to Wharfedale a couple of years before the outbreak of war to work as a footman for Sir Albert Illingworth at Denton Hall and as a gardener at Ben Rhydding Hydro. Private Harry Buck has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial to the missing. He is remembered on Ilkley War Memorial and at Skirlaugh near Hull

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