Only one of the Thurtle brothers came to harm during the fighting, and that was Harold. We only have his medals card, which shows that he joined the theatre of war in the Balkans, so somewhere in Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece or Bulgaria. However by 1917 he was serving in France, at the Cambrai front.
The war diary for the 20th November says that the fighting by the Essex Regiment started when "At 11am the advance was sounded by bugle". They had no luck when "At 1pm the Canal was reached , but unfortunately the bridge which had apparently been prepared for destruction collapsed under the leading Tank thereby blocking all advance" and "no progress was possible at this point".
Harold was killed in action on the 20th November 1917 at the Battle of Cambrai. He is not listed in the war diary as he was a private and only officers are mentioned by name. There is an entry at the end of the diary for the 21st November that states "Casualties on the 20th/21st amounted to – Killed, 3 Officers, 21 men; Wounded, 2 Officers, 107 men; Missing, 1 Officer, 31 men". He was one of the missing, and is therefore commemorated on the war memorial of the missing.
No comments:
Post a Comment