BORN NORTH FERRIBY 1894. HULL PAL. SON OF CHARLES DOUGHTY & ELLEN MARGARET IRELAND, ELLESMERE, NORTH FERRIBY. DOW FROM 4/6/16.
Hull Pal Memorials write: DAY 28. PRIVATE BENJAMIN IRELAND 10/261.Born 9th September 1894, Benjamin was the youngest of seven children to Charles and Ellen Ireland of Ellesmere, North Ferriby, Hull. An Architect’s Assistant before the war he enlisted at City Hall on 2nd September 1914 joining the fledgling 10th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Commercials’, 1st Hull Pals.
After training and their stint defending Suez from the Turks over the winter of 1915-16, the Pals arrived in Marseilles early in March and headed north to the trenches of the Western Front. They swapped a sea of sand for an ocean of mud.
Following the bombardment of 4th June 1916 which claimed the lives of so many of his comrades, the battalion was relieved by the 17th West Yorkshire Regiment and came out of the line to billets at Bus-Les-Artois. Benjamin was not with them. He had been severely wounded in the back and withdrawn to the hospitals of Abbeville where he died in agonies we can never imagine a day later. He is buried in Abbeville Communal Cemetery; a young man of 21.
Perhaps Private Graystone best described the leaving of those positions. He had the unenviable task of being in the working party charged with making what had been just a few hours before a sturdy front line position safe after it had been all but flattened by enemy shells.
“(I wish we had) “left the trench as it was, safe or not, for the stench coming out of the soil is horrible. It is discoloured with decomposed blood.”
