BORN HULL 06/09/1890. SON OF ISSAC PORTE (1859-1903) & ELIZABETH SAWDON (1865-1912). SISTER MARIA CRESSEY AT 28 EMILY STREET, HEDON ROAD, EAST HULL.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE FERGUS PORTE 31184. Born 6th September 1890, Fergus was the second of five children to Isaac and Elizabeth Porte. Both parents died before the war and Fergus lived with his sister Maria at 20 Emily Street, Hedon Road, Hull. A Fitter’s Labourer by trade, he had served with the army for four years between 1907 and 1911 and so was mobilised at the outbreak of war. Fergus duly obliged, enlisting on 8th September 1914 at Hull City Hall and joining the newly formed 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. He was part of the battalion Machine Gun company, but from the start health problems dogged his service. Fergus was hospitalised in Port Said with Gastritis on 15th January 1916 and though he recovered and returned to duty he was removed from the front line soon after his arrival in the trenches with “tubercular disease of the right foot”‘ later qualified as “necrosis of the bone tarsus”. He shipped for England aboard the hospital ship ‘St. Patrick’ on 20th April 1916 and was discharged as medically unfit for service on 1st June. He was awarded a Silver Wound Badge (No:142179). Fergus, however, had other ideas. He re-enlisted on 13th February 1917 as 63704 in the Durham Light Infantry and was attached to their Labour Corps, but was again hospitalised that June when his foot injury flared back up. Once more he recovered and on being passed fit was attached to his old Pals, the 11th East Yorkshires. It was a very different battalion to which he returned, the Somme and Oppy Wood had decimated its ranks and Fergus will not have been surrounded by the same friendly faces with which he’d trained throughout 1915, just two short years ago. This was to be his last posting. Fergus Porte was killed in action in the trenches at Arleux on 26th October 1917 and buried at Roclincourt Military Cemetery. He was a man as unsuited to the physical rigours of trench warfare as could be imagined, and yet his determination to do his bit drove him back time and time again until at last he could fight no more. He was 27 years old. His sister Maria attempted to find out what had happened to her brother, but the army bureaucrats were baffled by his record and it appears to have taken several letters before even THEY realised Fergus had re-enlisted under a new number and returned to the Pals.
Thank You to Mike Frankish who sent the following message and photographs on 04/03/2020 – Fergus “was my great-grandmother’s (Maria Cressey’s) brother. I was told by my late grandparents that he re-enlisted after having been presented with a white feather by a ‘lady’ on a tram. I have his death plaque & scroll and one remaining medal (framed together). A photo (albeit poor quality, but the only one I have). I also have the original death notification letter along with the original handwritten letter sent to his sister Maria by his platoon officer (2nd Lt Marcus Henry Clift) who was himself sadly killed days later in the daylight trench raid and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial. If you’d like any images of these for the site, please let me know. Maria’s husband (my great grandfather, Peter Cressey 7918) was a pre-war regular who served in Burma and India with the 2nd Bn, went to France as a reservist in Aug 14 with the 1st Bn/wounded, transferred to the Labour Corps and ultimately discharged medically unfit in March 1918. I also have paperwork and photos from his service.”
