We will remember them, March 1917

Each month Michael Scaife is producing articles for the St Philip and St James Church news sheet to remember those local residents who died in that month 100 years ago.

There are 71 men recorded on the Alderley Edge War Memorial, along with one member of the British Red Cross and a further 6 are remembered in the annual Remembrance Day service:

Two Alderley Edge men died in March 1917 in the Battle of Gaza in Palestine. British troops had been stationed in Egypt since the 1880s. After the entry of Turkey into the war as an ally of Germany, their task was to defend the Suez Canal, the vital link between Britain and India, against Turkish attacks. With the evacuation to Egypt of most of the forces engaged in the disastrous attempt on Gallipoli, British strength in Egypt was substantially increased and in the latter half of 1916 these forces advanced into Palestine. In January 1917 they completed the capture of the Sinai peninsula and on 26th March they attacked Gaza.

Private Albert Vincent Davies served in the 1/7th Battalion, Cheshire Regiment. His regimental number suggests that he volunteered early in the war and he probably served with the battalion in Gallipoli, where his brother, Gilbert Edward, serving in the same battalion, was killed on 1st December 1915. The battalion was evacuated from Gallipoli to Egypt shortly afterwards. Born in 1896, Albert attended the local school and left at 14 to work. The family lived in Chapel Street – father John, mother Mary Anne, and seven children (the eldest child had left home by 1911).

Private Owen William Parry served in another of the regiments evacuated from Gallipoli to Egypt, the 1/6th battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers. The family came from Bangor, where in 1911 Owen was living with his widowed mother and nine siblings. He enlisted at Bangor in March 1914, i.e. before the outbreak of war. In July 1915 he embarked for Gallipoli, but three weeks after arrival he was hospitalised with dysentery. He was sent home at the end of November, spent two months in hospital and was then in camp at Heaton Park until November. He was then sent to rejoin his battalion in Alexandria and died of shrapnel wounds on 27th March 1917 aged 24. The Alderley Edge connection is that by 1917 his mother had moved to Moss Lane.