Author name: Peter Gill

4th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment Leslie Howard Surman was born in Birmingham on 7 March 1897. He was educated at Cromwell Street PE School, Birmingham, Bishops Cleeve PE School and Cheltenham Grammar School between 1908 and 1912, after which he was employed as a clerk in the office of the Medical Officer for Health in the […]

1/5th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment Norman is the middle boy in this school photograph Norman Sollars was born on 2 July 1898 to Samuel and Mary who were living in Far End, Sheepscombe. Samuel was a gardener at Skippetts and the path across the common to Skippetts was known as Sam Sollars path. Norman went to

C Company, 10th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment Thomas Smith was baptised at St James’s Church, Campden, on 24 March 1895 and was the third son of George and Eliza Smith of Paul’s Pike. After leaving school he was employed as a farm labourer on Mr Keyte’s farm at Kingcombe, Campden.In January 1915 Tom and his cousin,

47th (British Columbia) Battalion, Canadian Army Reginald George Smith was born on 2 November 1883 to Daniel and Sarah, in the hamlet of Tortworth, now in South Gloucestershire. Educated at nearby Wotton under-Edge, he read Classics at Cambridge University. Having obtained his degree in 1905 he immediately sailed for Canada to take up a teaching

1st Battalion Leicestershire Regiment Herbert Stoney Smith was born in 1868 in Hampstead.A career soldier, Smith went to France and Flanders in 1914 where he took part in the desperate action at Rue du Bois, Armentieres from 22 to 25 October of that year. Two months later he was wounded and invalided home. On 1

6th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment Arthur Henry Smith was born on 13 April 1899 to Peter and Lucine Smith in Sheepscombe where his father worked as a cattleman. They lived near the The Green in 1901. Arthur had seven siblings and he went to school in Sheepscombe from 1904 to 1913.Arthur enlisted in the Essex Regiment

Gloucestershire Regiment Thomas Shott was born in Gloucester in 1881. He was the son of Thomas and Ellen Shott of Sweetbriar Street, Gloucester. His mother died very shortly after his birth and he was, at first, fostered by his aunt and uncle, Eliza and William Edwards of the New Inn, Columbia Street. His father remarried

1st Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment Hugh Godfrey de Lisle Bush was born in 1892 at Alveston (near Thornbury), the eldest of three sons and a daughter born to Alfred George de Lisle Bush and his wife Florence Katherine (nee Lysaght). His father was an iron merchant and the family lived at Eastington Park, near Stonehouse.He was

Machine Gun Corps (Tanks) Ernest John Buffin was born at Fairplay Cottages, Plump Hill, Mitcheldean in 1896, the son of Henry and Elizabeth Buffin. He started his working life as a hod boy in a local colliery (hod boys were employed to drag wooden boxes on skids loaded with coal from the coalface, a menial