Name
Albert Henry Bird
1890
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
31/12/1914
24
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
9307
Bedfordshire Regiment
1st Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 (Mons) Star, British War and Victory Medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
WIMEREUX COMMUNAL CEMETERY
I. C. 12A.
France
Headstone Inscription
NOT GONE FROM MEMORY OR FROM LOVE, GONE TO HIS FATHER'S HOME ABOVE
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Bishop's Stortford memorials, St Giles' Church Memorial, Great Hallingbury, Essex
Pre War
Albert Henry Bird was born in 1890 at Start Hill, Great Hallingbury, Essex), to William and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bird and lived with his parents at Start Hill Cottages, Hockerill, Bishop's Stortford on the 1901 Census. William was a railway labourer.
On the 1911 Census he was already in the army, serving with the Bedfordshire Regiment, 1st Battalion Infantry and living at the Maida Barracks, Stanhope Lines, Aldershot - a servant to an Army officer.
Wartime Service
He was serving with the 1st Bedfordshire Regiment on the outbreak of war and Albert’s Battalion was based in Mullingar, Ireland. They arrived in France via Le Havre on the SS Oronsa on 15 August 1914.and went to France on 16 August 1914.
After taking part in the early battles in France, the Battalion was sent to Ypres in Belgium, and took part in the First Battle of Ypres. The battalion diary records serious losses between 7th and 9th November 1914.
He died at the 14th Stationary Hospital in Boulogne of enteric fever. (It was an isolation hospital for the Boulogne area and only took men with infectious diseases).
Additional Information
Noted in Reg of Soldiers' Effects that he had left a will in favour of his mother Mrs W Bird, who received a war gratuity of £5 and pay owing of £17 14s 11d. Brother to Frederick Arthur Bird who was killed on 24 September 1916 and whose name appears on the Thiepval Memorial in Somme, France and the memorial at St Giles, Great Hallingbury, Essex. Arthur Bird who died in 1916 and is commemorated at Thiepval and who is also named on the Great Hallingbury Memorial.
Acknowledgments
Brenda Palmer
Douglas Coe
