TWO more soldiers from Redditch were killed in action this week 100 years ago during the First World War.
They were Ernest Alfred Vale and Alfred Edgar Gibbs who fought in different units miles from each yet suffered the same fate.
Ernest Vale was a career soldier.
The eldest of Alfred and Ada Vale’s 11 children, he was born in 1892 in the family home at 30 Evesham Road, Headless Cross.
His father worked as a cycle polisher with Royal Enfield and by the 1911 Ernest too was there working as a bike maker.
In April 1914, he’d married his sweetheart Beatrice May, and just four months later the couple had a son, Arthur Ernest, born on August 10, just six days after war was declared.
The couple live initially at 1a Mount Pleasant before moving to 94 Oakly Road.
However in 1910 Ernest had joined the Territorial Army, signing on for another four years in February, 1914.
His medical records show he was 5ft 7ins tall and weighed almost nine stone.
He joined the Royal Field Artillery serving with the Worcestershire Territorial Force Artillery, known as 241 Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, in ‘C’ Battery, the Redditch battery.
He went out to France in 1915 and rose to the rank of Sergeant, and like many British soldiers was thrown into the maelstrom of Passchendaele.
He was slightly wounded on August 13 when a cartridge split in the breach and then severally wounded on September 1, 1917.
Records show he never regained consciousness. He is buried at Bard Cottage Cemetery just outside Ypres and is remembered today on the St Stephen’s and St Luke’s war memorials.
Away from the bloodbath of Passchendaele the war was still raging, with soldiers and civilians dying every day.
Alfred Edgar Gibbs was born in Alvechurch in 1888, the eldest of two sons born to William and Sarah Gibbs.
By 1911 the family were living at 12 Phillips Terrace on Beoley Road. William ran his own scouring business while Alfred was a polisher with a cycle maker.
During the war he served with the 1st Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment and must have seen some intense combat.
In the Battle of Arras, in April and May 1917, their losses in four attacks had nearly wiped out the battalion.
They were moved out of the line to recover but in spells went back to the front in ‘quiet sectors’.
It is not known how Alfred died, but experts at the regimental museum suspect he was wounded on the Fresnoy – Oppy Wood area.
From here he was moved to a casualty clearing station where up to 20 surgeons at a time battled to save men’s lives.
He died on September 4 and is buried at the Roclincourt cemetery near Arras and is remembered today on the St Philip’s war memorial.
With grateful thanks to Chris Copson, curator of The keep military museum, home of the regiments of Devon and Dorset, Remembering Redditch’s Fallen Heroes; Remembering – Battle of Passchendaele by Gillian Coombes.
