Foster, Wilfred

Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE WILFRED FOSTER 12/1189. Born in 1886 Wilfred was the youngest of three children to Edward and Mary Foster. He married Harriet Ann Harman in 1904 and the couple lived at 7 Florence Avenue, Grange Street, Hull with their four daughters Gertrude, Hilda, Annie and Mary. A Bricklayer by trade he enlisted at City Hall on the 15th December 1914 joining the 12th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, 3rd Hull Pals.
The Battalion shipped to Egypt in December 1915 to defend the Suez Canal, and here Wilfred appears to have committed a crime of sufficient magnitude to warrant a sentence of 9 months imprisonment with hard labour. The sentence was suspended and he was returned to duties, but it nevertheless cast a shadow.
On February 29th 1916 the Pals left Egypt for Marseilles and the train north to the trenches of the Western Front. They arrived early in March. Two things happened over the first months of his stay. In May he attended machine gun school, learning the ropes away from the front line but destined for a job which made you an immediate target of enemy guns. In August his suspended sentence had 6 months remitted by Brigadeer General Williams, the commanding officer for the entire 92nd Brigade, for “exemplary conduct and conspicuous devotion to duty under shellfire.”
The other 3 months he didn’t live to serve. Wilfred was fatally wounded at Beaumont Hamel on the Somme on 13th November 1916. He lived two more days. He is buried in Couin British Cemetery. He was 30 years old, a husband and a father of four.