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Albert Edwin Gill (1897-1918)


Wingate man served with Royal Fusiliers


From a family member:

Albert Edwin Gill was my grandmother’s uncle. This always seemed strange as he was 3 years younger than her!

I know very little about him other than he was the youngest of 12 children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. His mother and father were both born in Cornwall and as the copper mines failed they moved to find new work, eventually settling in the north east of England after a short sojourn in Wales, mining iron ore.

The family lived in the Wingate area and Albert’s father William went to work in the local mine, followed eventually by his four oldest sons. On the 1891 census it shows the family (Albert had not yet been born), living in Hutton Henry, a small village near Wingate; there were nine children, four working as miners, three at school and two infants – they even had a servant!

On the 1901 census, still in the Wingate area, many of the older children had left home, leaving only five children with two new additions: Percy and his younger brother, Albert. By 1911, Albert is 14 and working as a ‘coal screener, above ground’, so, he too followed his father to the local pit.

In 1914 all this would change, with the outbreak of the war. I don’t have many firm facts but I understand that he may have joined the Durham Light Infantry, at first – perhaps he went along with his uncle William who also enlisted, but at some point he transferred and joined the 23rd Battalion the Royal Fusiliers, who I believe were called ‘The 1st Sportsman’s’.

The account given by H C O’Neill in his book ‘The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War’ paints a picture of the Fusiliers being engaged in most of the major battles of the war, from their arrival in November 1915 to the very end. The 23rd were in the thick of the fighting from the Somme to the Battle of Cambrai but my main interest lies as the war was in its final months. Having survived some of the worst fighting and killing, Albert was killed on the 8 September 1918.

In the final attempt to rid the area of the defeated German army, a push was made towards the Hindenburg line and the French town of Havrincourt. The Book tells that the 23rd battalion was in the area just short of Havrincourt in a place called Doignies and on 7 and 8 September the battalion took heavy loses as the Germans made a concerted effort to hold this part of the line. Sadly, it appears that Albert was one of the causalities; his body was never recovered but he is remembered on the Vis-en-Artois Memorial in France.

Civil Parish: Wingate

Birth date: 1897

Death date: 08-Sep-1918

Armed force/civilian: Army

Residence: 307 Mill Row, Wingate (1901 census)
Front Street, Wingate (1911 census)
35 North Road West, Wingate (CWGC)

Employment: Coal screener, above ground (1911 census)

Family: Parents: William Daw Gill, Elizabeth Gill
Siblings: Alfred James Gill, Annie Gill, Ellen Gill, Percy Jared Gill

Military service:

G/93374
23rd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

Memorial(s): Vis-en-Artois Memorial, France
Holy Trinity Chuch, Wingate, wall plaque

Gender: Male

Contributed by Sandy, Harrogate

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