BORN FORT WILLIAM, INVERNESS 20/01/1894. LIVED IN HULL. A HULL PAL. KILLED IN ACTION. SON OF ROBERT WARNES & ANN HARRISON HOPE, OF EARLES COTTAGE, EAST HALTON, LINCOLNSHIRE . HIS BROTHERS ROBERT & FREDERICK WARNES ALSO DIED DURING THE WAR. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL, ON 12/10/1918. *
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE GEORGE EDWARD WARNES 11/1320. Born in Fort William, Inverness George was living in Hull when war broke out and enlisted at City Hall joining the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. Details of his birth and early life are unavailable as Scottish census records are not listed, and with his military records absent too I am working as I am often forced to and telling his story through the history of the battalion. A veteran of Egypt, the Somme, Oppy Wood and Vimy Ridge, George was killed in action on 12th April 1918 during the darkest hours of the German Spring Offensive when the line was broken and enemy soldiers, fresh from the Eastern Front, stormed through aiming to take Paris and end the war. Field Marshall Haig issued his infamous ‘To the last man’ statement to British forces in a desperate bid to restore some order to the retreat and to allow the Allies chance to dig in and hold a new line. In the coming days he would come to praise the Pals for their actions in holding up the German forces at this pivotal moment, but it was at the cost of hundreds of lives and George, like so many of his fallen comrades, was simply never seen again alive or dead; his name is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial.
Pte, George Edward Warnes, is recorded on the Scotland’s People website. George was born on 20 January 1894 at 2 am at the Fort, Fort William, Kilmallie, Argyll. His father was Robert Warnes, an Engine Driver for the Railway Works. His mother was Ann Harrison Warnes, maiden surname Hope.. They were married on 19 May 1891 at Helensburgh.
George’s family in the 1901 UK census. Robert and Ann’s family are living in a hut in Millom, Cumbria. Robert is still an Engine Driver. George is the eldest of three boys. George is 7. Robert H. is 4 and Frederick W. is 2. All the men in the huts are working for the railway, it seems.
The 1911 census has George, age 17 – a student, living with his uncle Edward Charles Warne, an Oil & Seed Broker, at Redenhall, Eastbourne Road, Hornsea. The family were widely travelled looking at the birthplaces the children. Robert Warnes and his brother Edward Charles orginate from Great Yarmouth.
His brother, Private, Robert Hope Warnes, 12/1181, 12th East Yorkshire Regiment, enlisted in Hull on 14/12/1914 and was killed in action, on 13/10/1917, aged 21. His brother Frederick William Warnes, died in 1916, aged 17. Army Records show their parents living at Earles Cottage, East Halton Lincolnshire at the end of the war.
