BORN HULL 1887. SON OF WILLIAM CLARK BROWN (1862-1948) & ELIZABETH GARDHAM (1862-1936), OF 94, ST PAULS STREET, HULL. HIS WIFE, REBECCA & CHILD, LIVED AT 3 PROVIDENCE STREET, MYTON STREET & 10 CLIFF TERRACE, GRANGE STREET, HULL. HE WAS A COOPER BY TRADE. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS. SERVED IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. KILLED ON 29/03/1916, AGED 29.
HIS CAPTAIN WROTE HE WAS A GOOD SOLDIER AND COMRADE. (HDM 08/04/1916). HE IS BURIED AT MESNIL RIDGE CEMETERY, MESNIL-MARTINSART, SOMME, FRANCE.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE GEORGE BROWN 11/135. Born July 1887, George was the third of seven children to William and Elizabeth Brown, of 94 St. Paul’s Street, Hull. He was raising a family with his wife Rebecca and living at 3 Providence Street when war broke out, and was among the first to volunteer for the ‘Tradesmen’, the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, the Hull Pals. He trained throughout 1915 at barracks in Hornsea, Beverley and Ripon before shipping out to Egypt that December. The Pals served there over the winter of 1915-16 before being re-posted to the Western Front, and the trenches. George was killed in action on 29th March 1916 in the trenches opposite Beaumont Hamel, by a Minenwerfer trench mortar shell which claimed the life of Private Charles Welton Stuart 11/1078 (Day 619) also. George is buried at Mesnil Communal Cemetery; he was 29 years old.
Private Pearson was part of a ration party just leaving the line at the time of the attack:
“Away in front of me I heard a soft, dull plop. As I turned to see more clearly, there in front, somewhere between both lines of trenches and up above I spotted a dark blob, it could have been a bird but having reached a certain height it suddenly began to descend and the next moment there was a mighty crash somewhere in the region of our front line, and before we….moved off to meet the ration carts at the entrance to the trenches we had to make way for the stretcher bearers bringing out our first casualty from the front line casting a gloom over us for the rest of the night.”
