Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE ARTHUR BEAL TASKER 11/1319. Born in 1891, Arthur was the sixth of nine children to Thomas and Emma Tasker of 12 Rowland Terrace, St. Paul Street, Hull. A Labourer before the war, he married Minnie Broadbent in January 1913 when war was the least of their worries. When hostilities came he dutifully enlisted at City Hall joining the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment. ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. He served in Egypt and France and it was the trenches of the Western Front which claimed him. He was mortally wounded on 13th November 1916 at Vauchelles on the Somme, and although he was evacuated from the front line to the Field Ambulance at Couin, he died there soon after. Private Surfleet brilliantly describes that day and perfectly encapsulates just how difficult it was for anyone to know what was really happening:
“Woke early on the morning of November 13th and heard the boys went over at 5.45 in thick fog and took the German first and second lines in this Serre sector fairly easily, surprising the Germans in their dugouts. Breakfast was an awful meal; news of losses, of wounded, of killed, kept coming through. Each time a man or an officer came up to the dressing station, the news of all he could tell spread like wildfire. Everything seemed jumbled up; no-one had a clear idea of what was going on, but it seemed certain there had been a big counter-attack and that our losses had been terrible. Every moment we expected to be called up to go and reinforce them. During the morning a draft of thirty new men arrived from England. Poor devils!”
His death was reported in the Hull Daily Mail, on 30/11/1916. *
Arthur is buried at Couin British Cemetery; he was 25 years old. Though there is no direct connection in the records, an Arthur Beal Tasker was born in Hull in October 1915- it seems certain he left behind a young son.
