BORN HESSLE 1899. LIVED HESSLE. ENLISTED HULL. EX PRIVATE, 51549, EAST RIDING YEOMANRY. KILLED IN ACTION, ON 29/09/1918, AGED 19. GRANDSON OF GEORGE & ANNE BLAGG & SECOND SON OF ELIZABETH BLAGG (1874-1948), OF 6 ITlINGS LANE, HESSLE, HULL (1911 CENSUS ADDRESS). HE HAD BROTHERS , ARTHUR, FRANK AND FRED AND SISTERS, CLARICE, EVERLINE AND MIRRIAM.. HIS NAME IS RECORDED ON THE HESSLE ROLL OF HONOUR, ALL SAINTS PARISH CHURCH. HIS BROTHER, PRIVATE, ARTHUR BLAGG, SERVED WITH THE 12TH EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED AT OPPY WOOD, ONN 03/05/1917, AGED 21.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE STANLEY BLAGG 51215. Born in 1899, Stanley lived with his brothers and sisters at the home of his Grandfather at 6 Itings Lane, Hessle. When war came he joined up at City Hall in Hull and became a part of the 10th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Commercials’; Hull Pals. He was killed in action on 29th September 1918 as the battalion attacked German positions hidden among the shattered tree trunks of Ploegsteert Wood. The biggest problem they faced were concrete machine gun bunkers extremely well concealed in the scrub and foliage, which had proved nigh-on impenetrable even to heavy artillery. The Pals were caught in murderous crossfire as they tried to assemble and then advance toward their objective. Somewhere in the melee a bullet took the life of young Stanley. He was given a battlefield burial and exhumed after the Armistice when he was buried at Enclosure 4 of Bedford House Cemetery; he was 19 years old. In a cruel twist of fate, his elder brother Arthur, one of the original Pals and a member of the 12th Battalion, had lost his life just over a year before attacking another wood; he had been killed in action on 3rd May 1917 at Oppy.
