Name
Edwin Bertie Coles
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
20/07/1918
20
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
39837
Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
2nd/4th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
SOISSONS MEMORIAL
France
UK & Other Memorials
Abbots Langley Village Memorial
Biography
Edwin Bertie Coles was recorded as Bert and Bertie in the Abbots Langley Parish Magazine Roll of Honour. He was born in Podington, Bedfordshire in the spring of 1899. In 1911 Bertie lived with his two sisters, and parents, Edwin and Sarah Coles, at the Gardener’s Cottage, The Manor, Kempston in Bedfordshire. Edwin (father) was employed as a Gardener Domestic, and Bertie, despite still being at school, had a part-time job as a Grocer’s Errand Boy. It is not known when the family moved to Abbots Langley, however they took up residence at 54 Marlin Square sometime before 1918.
Bertie enlisted at Watford and was first recorded in the Abbots Langley Parish Magazine Roll of Honour in July 1917. He was serving with the 12th Battalion of the Training Reserve. It is not known when he transferred to the 2/4th Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI), however he was listed with this unit from January 1918 until the end of the War.
Between 14th and 16th July 1918 the 2/4th KOYLI moved from Doullens on the Somme to the Reims Front. The battalion was transported by train via Paris, and completed the trip by a series of route marches. They took up positions at Ecueil, to the south-west of Reims at 4am on the morning of 20th July, and later in the day took part in a counter-attack, alongside French troops. Bertie Coles was killed in action during this attack.
His death was reported in the Abbots Langley Parish Magazine in September 1918 –
“We deeply lament the loss of two more of our boys, both 19 years of age, and both sent out to the Front in March (1918) during the great German offensive, and belonging to that gallant body of British youth who Mr Lloyd-George said stopped and broke the power of the trained soldiers of Germany. Edwin Bertie Coles was one of our Choir boys, and more latterly one of our Choirmen, a boy of a most loving and amiable disposition. Keen and active in anything that he took up, he joined the Forces a year ago, and was killed in action on July 20th. We offer to the father and mother of these gallant boys our sincerest sympathy”.
Edwin Bertie Coles was commemorated on the Soissons Memorial, Aisne, France, and on the Abbots Langley War Memorial. Hamilton Osler, a Bedmond man, was also listed on the same French Memorial.
Acknowledgments
Roger Yapp - www.backtothefront.org
