Day 985. Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE GEORGE DAVIES 41873. Born in 1899, George was the second of three children to Joseph and Sarah Anne Davies of Little Onn, Church Eaton, Staffordshire. He enlisted in Stafford, originally as 47215 in the North Staffs Regiment before transferring to the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment on his arrival in France in late March 1918. Another one of the new draft of soldiers hastily shipped across the Channel to shore up the dwindled ranks of units mauled by the German Spring Offensive and falling back threatening the collapse of the entire Allied line. It is a sad truth of our memory of the war that its set-pieces, the Somme and Passchendaele, with their evocative images of dutiful lines of innocents scythed like meadow grass or drowning in a morass of mud respectively, can often mask how appalling 1918 was. Although the war ground to a halt before the years end, anyone following these posts long term will have noticed that March to November 1918 account for as many casualties as all the previous years of conflict put together. First employed in holding up the German advance in March and April, and then employed in pushing them back through August and September, this was the worst of all times for the Pals. George Davies was fatally wounded on the Armentieres front and withdrawn to the hospital centre at Boulogne where he died on 12th May 1918. He is buried at Boulogne Southern Cemetery; he was 18 years old.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 22:27:02 +0000
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