Frank Greest Gaisford

Frank Greest Gaisford
Rank 
Rifleman
Regiment 
London Regiment (First Surrey Rifles)
Date of death 
21 June 1918
Age of death 
19
Address 
200 Kingston Road
Ilford
IG1 1PF
Address source 
1911 Census
Cemetery / Memorial 
France
Photo source 
John Gaisford
Biography 

Frank Gaisford was born on Saturday 18th February 1899 at 43 Neville Road, Forest Gate, but grew up at 200 Kingston Road, Ilford. He went to Loxford School in Ilford, a few streets away from his home, until the age of fourteen. From July 1914 he was also employed as a boy clerk at the Patent Office in Chancery Lane, London, which was part of the Board of Trade. He also took classes at Clark’s College in Chancery Lane, and passed two Civil Service exams (Boy Clerkships, 1914 and Assistant Clerkships, 1916). He was a member of the Young Men’s Guild at St Alban’s Parish Church, Ilford, and sang in the choir. He was 15 when the Great War broke out in August 1914.

At the beginning of April 1917, soon after his eighteenth birthday, Frank was conscripted into the 23rd Training Reserve Battalion and sent for basic training at St Albans. In June he applied unsuccessfully to train for a commission, or to transfer into the Royal Flying Corps or the Artists’ Rifles, probably hoping so serve with close friends in these units. Instead, as Private F.G. Gaisford, no. 10747, he was awarded a Second Class Certificate of Education by the Army Council in July. In September he joined the 52nd (Young Soldiers’) Battalion of the Queen’s West Surrey Regiment at Colchester, and was probably housed in one of the many purpose-built huts at Reed Hall barracks. On 18 February 1918, his 19th birthday, he was sent on to Norwich, prior to embarkation to France. His small red address book, which lists several of his friends in the army, at the Patent Office and in Ilford, records the address of a billet at 32, Quebec Road, Norwich.

Frank was sent to France on 31 March 1918, just 10 days after the German High Command had launched a massive Spring Offensive right across the British sector of the Somme. The Germans had broken through the British lines and advanced up to forty miles in the first week, threatening the British HQ and vital railway junction at Amiens before they were held up by a determined rearguard action, large-scale French reinforcements and the difficulty of hauling heavy guns through the mud for which the Somme was notorious. There had been tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, and replacements were urgently needed. Frank’s unit left Norwich on a night train, reached Folkestone at 4 am and crossed the Channel at 5.30 pm on the Steam Ship Princess Victoria.

On arrival at Boulogne, they were sent on by rail in cattle trucks, first to Etaples, 20 miles down the coast, and the next day to Rubempré, 10 miles north of Amiens, which they reached on 4 April. Frank scribbled on the back of a farewell letter from his father ‘Feeling down. Soaked thro’ to skin. No grub for 21 hours.’ The last stage of the journey had taken 12 hours to cover just 70 miles.

Frank had been expecting to be posted to the East Surrey Regiment, but was sent instead to join the 21st Battalion of the London Regiment (also known as the 1st Surrey Rifles) at the village of Senlis-le- Sec, just behind the front-line trenches overlooking Albert. The battalion had been under constant attack for over a week, and forced to withdraw almost daily to avoid capture.

Now Rifleman F.G. Gaisford, no. 39818, Frank was immediately in danger from a concentrated German effort to cross the river Ancre, in the valley below Senlis. The regimental diary records that from 7am on 5 April, the 21st London were bombarded with high explosive, shrapnel and gas. The next day they counted 66 casualties from gas. The new draft of 144 men were inspected, and for the next two nights were deployed improving the support trenches at Bouzincourt: mainly digging, reinforcing the trench sides, and staking out barbed wire. But there were no more casualties. The German Spring Offensive had ceased, at least for the time being.

For the next three weeks, the 21st London was withdrawn from the front to recuperate, and made series of marches and bus journeys west to reach the village of Lamotte-Bouleux, north of Abbeville at the mouth of the Somme. There they undertook more training, had baths and even a sports day. But on 28 April they were dispatched back to the front, this time to Warloy-Baillon, about three miles behind the front line, from where the 21st London would relieve the 22nd Australian Battalion at Lavieville. From 1-6 May they held the trenches there, before moving to Millencourt for a further week before they in turn were relieved on 15 May and withdrew to Warloy.

A further two weeks of recuperation began, with baths nearby at Contay on 16 May, a music-hall performance by ‘The Follies’ on 25 May and an open-air church service the next day. A return to the trenches was imminent, but Frank would not make that short journey. On Tuesday 28 May two shells struck the camp at Warloy at about 8 am, wounding 18 men. Frank was taken the same day to the No. 4 Casualty Clearing Station at Pernois, north-west of Amiens, where his right leg was amputated at the knee.

This field hospital under canvas, with a surgeon-major, sister and 15 staff, had been inspected a month earlier and declared to be ‘in absolute order...[with] every possible convenience, flowers in the marquees etc.’ At a period of relative quiet on the front line, Frank would have been well cared for and was ‘beginning to improve’; but he was ‘still very ill’ with sepsis in both legs when the decision was taken to move him again to the 2,000-bed No. 1 South African General Hospital at Abbeville. He would not recover. On 24 June a telegram was delivered to his father at Ilford, reporting Frank’s death. Soon afterward a letter arrived from the matron, Miss Creagh, informing his mother that ‘he gradually got weaker and weaker and for the past two or three days was delirious.’ Frank had died on Midsummer’s Day, 21 June, at 3pm. He was 19 years old, and had been in France for just under three months.

The hospital forwarded Frank’s ‘few little things’, including his number tag, address book, tobacco pouch, cigarette case and match tin. His military watch, whose strap shows he was left-handed, had stopped at 18 minutes to eight, confirming the exact time of the blast. His family was sent the War and Victory Medals, but the envelopes remain unopened. In March 1919 the Ministry of Pensions awarded Mrs H. Gaisford a dependant’s pension of five shillings per week with effect from 6 November 1918, in respect of the contribution her lost son had been making to the family income.

Frank was buried in the military extension of Abbeville Cemetery, where the many graves of British and Commonwealth soldiers are now tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The place was marked at first by a plain wooden cross, but replaced with a headstone by the time his brother Arthur visited in autumn 1925. His name is commemorated at the War Memorial Hall in Eastern Avenue, Ilford (with 1,158 others); in St Alban’s Parish Church, Albert Road, Ilford (with 14 others); at Redbridge Town Hall, in Ilford High Road; at the Intellectual Property Office (formerly the Patent Office) at Newport, South Wales (with 27 others); and in the Department of International Trade, incorporating the Board of Trade, at 3 Whitehall Place, London, SW1 (with 304 others).

Contribution by John Gaisford, nephew of Frank Greest Gaisford