Name
George Thorold Harris
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
13/04/1918
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Lance Corporal
203182
York and Lancaster Regiment
1st/4th Bn
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
TYNE COT MEMORIAL
Panel 125 to 128.
Belgium
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Sawbridgeworth Town Memorial, Great St Mary’s Church Memorial, Sawbridgeworth, Not listed on the Hertfordshire Regimental Memorial, All Saints Church, Hertford
Pre War
George Harris was born in Sheffield in 1883. Before the war he was a teacher living in Manchester.
George lodged in Sawbridgeworth in 1901 and a number of people living locally had the same surname. we have yet to find any other connection.
Wartime Service
Formerly 6061 in the Hertfordshire Regiment. George Harris then served with the 1/4th (Hallamshire) Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment. This was a Territorial unit, activated at the start of the war.
On the 4 April 1915, the unit landed at Boulogne in France. Its first action was a German gas attack at Aubers Ridge. It was later involved in major attacks during the Somme offensive in 1916 and in Flanders in 1917.
Although George Harris survived these, he was killed (actually ‘Reported Missing’) on the 13 April 1918 defending Neuve Eglise during the Battle of Bailleul, a part of the ‘Battles of the Lys’, which opposed the German ‘Michael’ offensive. George has no known grave and is named on the Tyne Cot Memorial. He was aged 35.
Additional Information
His older brother Gilbert Thorold Harris also died.
Acknowledgments
Jonty Wild, Douglas Coe
