Raper, Fred

BORN LUMBY, NEAR SOUTH MILFORD, YORKS, 1896. EX RECKITT’S WORKER. SON OF WILLIAM RAPER.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE FRED RAPER 21056. Born September 1896, Fred was the youngest of eight children to William and Eliza Raper of ‘Lumby’, South Milford. A Grocer’s Assistant by trade he was living at 7 Melrose Crescent, Greek Street, Hull when war broke out and enlisted at City Hall on 18th November 1915. Originally in first the 9th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, and passing through the ranks of the 8th and 6th en route, Fred ended up with the 11th when he arrived in France just after the onset of the Somme campaign in July 1916. It must have been terrifying. He served in that ill-fated attack until it petered out in the waist-deep mud and torrential rain of that November, and was there also at Oppy Wood the following May as his comrades fell around him and yet he made it through unscathed. Hospitalised with septic toes in September 1917, he returned to the lines two months later for the last time. Fred Raper was killed in action as the Pals were pushed up to meet the full force of the German Spring Offensive on 25th March 1918, his body was never recovered and his name is commemorated on the Arras Memorial; he was 21 years old.