PRIVATE 19930 NATHAN GRAVESON, 1ST BATTALION KINGS OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS.


PRIVATE 19930 NATHAN GRAVESON, 1ST BATTALION KINGS OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS. KILLED IN ACTION 1ST JULY 1916.


The 1st Battalion the Kings Own Scottish Borderers were in the first wave of the attack on July 1st and emerged from their trench at precisely 07.33, near to the village of Beaumont Hamel. Behind them, in reserve trenches, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment waited to follow up the Borderers anticipated success. The battalion lined up in full view of the German machine gunners who who began to fire into the milling British soldiers. After an hour the Borderers attack was deemed a failure and the battalion recalled. Of the 1000 men who had begun that morning 568 had become casualties. Worse was to follow as the Newfoundlanders were ordered into the attack. Unable to get to the front line trenches they rose up from the reserve trenches only to be mowed down in a hail of machine gun fire. Of their 780 men 670 would be hit.

 28 year old Nathan Graveson was in the first wave. A private in the Kings Own Scottish Borderers he had already seen service with the battalion at Gallipoli. Nathan was one of those who failed to return to the British front line and was reported missing on 1st July. Months later his mother, Elizabeth Anderson, would write plaintive letters to newspapers begging for any information about the fate of her youngest son.

 Nathan Graveson was born in Levens, Westmorland in 1888, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth. His father died soon after he was born, and the family moved to the Little London area of Leeds where his mother re-married. Two of his older sisters came to Ilkley before the war to work as maids at Dropping Well House on Skipton Road. Their mother joined them in Ilkley, although, Nathan appears to have joined the Army at this time.The body of Private Nathan Graveson was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the missing and is remembered on Ilkley War Memorial

                 Cross laid at the base of the Caribou Memorial Newfoundland Park June 2018

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