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Auction: 13001 - Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals and Militaria
Lot: 402

Great War Bronze Memorial Plaque (Ernest White Francis), extremely fine

10295 Private Ernest White Francis, born Plymouth, Devon; served with the 8th Battalion Devonshire Regiment during the Great War; killed in action on the Western Front on the First Day of the Battle of Loos, 25.9.1915: ´The 20th Brigade, the right of the 7th Division, was to attack the part of the front known as the Breslau Trench. Its two leading battalions, the 2nd Gordons and the 8th Devons, issued from their trenches in lines of companies punctually at 06:30 hours. The advance was at first completely enveloped in the gas cloud, and here, too, the smoke-helmets brought more curses than blessings from all ranks. After a few minutes the men, almost suffocated, had to remove them to get breath, many being subsequently incapacitated by the gas fumes. In an effort to dispel the very effective smoke cloud, the German artillery, particularly the batteries in Gun Trench, began bursting shell into it, and the assaulting battalions lost heavily from this fire whilst crosing the five hundred yards of No Man´s Land. In front of the 8th Devons only a few gaps in the wire had been made, so that the leading men were delayed, and the rear lines pressing forward caused great crowding at every passage. As a result, the Germans in Bareslau Trench were able to inflict serious damage on the Devons in a very short space of time, and the majority of their heavy casualties occurred close up to the wire entanglement. In the 24 hours´ fighting from dawn on the 25th September to dawn on the 26th, the 8th Devons lost all 19 Officers and 600 men out of 750´ (Official History of the War refers). Francis is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, France.

Sold for
£110