Pearce, Frederick William

BORN HULL 1890. WIFE MRS C (SOLE) LIVED AT 31 MIDLAND STREET, HULL (CWGC ADDRESS). SON OF FRED PEARCE & MARY ALICE PEARCE, OF 7 MOXON STREET, HULL. A LABOURER. HE DIED ON 07/09/1918, AGED 28.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE FREDERICK WILLIAM PEARCE 21796. Born in June 1890, Frederick was the eldest of four sons to Frederick and Mary Pearce. His mother died when he was young, but his father raised them himself which must have been a struggle, working hours as they were in late Victorian England, and I expect as the eldest, our Fred will have had more than his fair share of duties. The family lived at 62 English Street in Hull. A Horseman before the war, Frederick enlisted on 11th December 1915, just days before the dreaded Conscription Bill was passed and ratified. To go in as a Volunteer meant you were pretty low in the pecking order, but as a Conscript you were regarded as one step above a coward. On 14th May 1916 Frederick married Cecilia Garton at St. James’s in Hull; they were together for 11 days; he shipped off to France on the 25th. He was a hard man to kill. The Germans tried three times. In November 1916 he received a gun shot wound to the head but survived and returned to the lines only to be shot again in the knee the following May, and then in the back during the Spring Offensive of March 1918. He finally ran out of luck on 7th September 1918 as the Pals attacked enemy positions around Soyer Farm. His papers say he was buried “3 miles NNW of Armentieres” in what eventually became Pont-D’Achelles Military, Nieppe; he was 28 years old.