PRIVATE 48465 GEORGE EDWARD CALVERT, 2/6th NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT.

PRIVATE 48465 GEORGE EDWARD CALVERT, 2/6th NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 30th NOVEMBER 1917, AGED 



George Calvert was born in the tiny village of Coatham, near to Redcar on the Yorkshire Coast in Cleveland. His mother is known to have been called Agnes but there are no details of his father and it is possible that he was illegitimate. He spent his childhood in the care of his elderly grandfather whose death just before the war caused him to move down to Ilkley. George had an older sister Ellen who worked in domestic service at Ghyll Royd on Grove Road and who in 1913 married a local man called Harry Robinson. The newly married couple lived at 7 Castle Yard where George joined them after the death of his grandfather.

It appears that George enlisted into the army during late 1916 and was posted to the 2/6th North Staffordshire Regiment sometime the following year. In November of that year the battalion was heavily involved in the attacks at Cambrai and on the 30th of that month were manning the trenches near to Bourlon Wood. Early British success in the battle prompted fierce counter-attacks by the Germans. The trenches held by the North Staffs were the subject of prolonged shelling by both high explosive and Mustard Gas causing over 300 casualties in just a few hours. Sadly, George was one of those men who were killed.

Private George Calvert has no known grave and is commemorated on the Cambrai Memorial to the Missing and remembered with pride on Ilkley War Memorial

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19

Image
PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9 th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8 th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19 The youngest son of John Allan-Black and his wife Claire, Hugh was born in the hamlet of Stone Gappe near Lothersdale in the Craven District on the 25 th May 1899. His father was a wool merchant whose father Charles Ingham Black was a noted Irish scholar and poet and formally the Vicar of Burley in Wharfedale. His mother Claire nee Delius was the sister of the famous conductor Frederick Delius of Bradford and who in 1935 would write his biography. When Hugh was very young the family moved to Victoria Avenue in Ilkley where he attended the grammar school. However, in 1914 the family left the town and moved to Castletown on the Isle of Man where Hugh attended King Williams College. Hugh left school in 1917 when he achieved the age of 18 and enlisted into the army. His health was not of the strongest and he appears to have suffered from a w
Read more

2nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28.

Image
2 nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15 th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13 th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28. On the morning of the of the 1 st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, one thousand men of the Leeds Pals awaited the signal to leave the relative safety of their trenches and advance towards the German trenches situated a few hundred yards away in the remains of the village of Serre. Days of heavy British shelling had reduced the landscape to a sea of craters and it was blithely assumed that the enemy wire and trenches had been obliterated. At 7.30am precisely whistles blew and the Pals climbed out of their trenches and began to fan out before starting their deliberate advance towards the German lines. But contrary to their expectations the enemy had not been subdued and instead rushed to man their firing lines and opened up a deadly hail of machine guns bullets. The Leeds men now moving forward in lines walked steadily
Read more

CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22.

Image
CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4 th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27 th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22. During the Summer of 1918 as the war on the Western Front progressed towards its conclusion there was no let up in the intensity of the fighting as the Allied armies drove against a faltering but still dangerous enemy. After the successes achieved by the Germans during their Spring Offensive the British slowly and steadily regained the ground that they had lost earlier in the year and were now poised to breach the fearsome defences of the Hindenburg Line. Even though the fighting now took place over the shattered battlefields of 1916 and 1917 fighting  was more mobile and success depended on speedy rather than meticulous planning; it was a type of warfare at which British Divisions seemed to excel. The 62 nd (West Riding) Division had only arrived in France in 1917 and was recruited largely from the old West Riding of Yorkshire. Its effi
Read more