352nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
No evidence of Gunner Oakley’s Army service appears to have survived apart from a death notice in the Gloucester Journal of 3 November 1917, no mention of him in the local newspapers of the time.
What is known is that Ernest Henry Oakley was born in 1876 at Normanton, Yorkshire and was the son of Charles Albert Oakley and his wife Emily Holmes (née Russell).
According to the 1911 Census his father was a railway guard with the Midland Railway and the couple had twelve children, of whom nine were surviving at that time.
The family lived at 1 Harp Villas, Cemetery Road, Gloucester. The census records that Ernest was an asylum attendant.
On 30 October 1911, he married Amy Beatrice White (aged 26) at All Saints Church. Ernest who was aged 36, was then living at 49 Twyver Street, Gloucester and worked as a milkman.
The couple had a daughter, Beatrice Fanny Beryl in 1912.
Rather oddly, Gunner Oakley does not appear as a casualty in the volumes of Soldiers Died in the Great War, which may indicate that he died following discharge from the Army. He does, however, appear in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) records and these state that he served with 352 Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery.
This brigade was part of 72 Division and served entirely in the UK. The Division was formed in late 1916 and its role was to train men for overseas drafts, plus providing men for home defence and was initially established in Somerset, with the Divisional Headquarters set up at Weston-super-Mare, before moving to Bath.
Between 5 to 18 January 1917 its various brigades were located in Bedford, Wellingborough and Northampton, with the Division under the command of the Southern Army, Home Forces, responsible for East Coast defences from the River Deben to Orfordness.
All we know of Ernest Oakley’s death is that it occurred on 27 October 1917 at 69 Painswick Road in Gloucester, when he was aged 42.
He was buried in Gloucester Old Cemetery, where a standard CWGC headstone marks his grave.
Researched by Graham Adams 7 September 2019