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Second Lieutenant Ernest Brett was killed in action on 23 Apr 1917 at the Battle of the Scarpe in France. He is remembered on the Arras Memorial, on the Hengate Memorial, the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster and on the Grovehill Street Shrine. He came from a military familyand was born at Victoria Barracks in Beverley on 8 Aug 1880, baptised on 17 Sep in Beverley Minster. His father, Thomas Brett, from Newark, was a sapper in the Royal Engineers; his mother was local, Jane Brett (nee Scott). They had six children born in Beverley and one more born in Aldershot when they moved there in 1888/9.
Ernest joined the army in 1898 he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and served with the 1st Battalion in South Africa in the Boer War, arriving at the Cape in Nov 1899. He was awarded the King’s South Africa Medal with 1901 and 1902 clasps Later his Battalion served in India where they were stationed at the outbreak of WW1. In the 1911 census he is recorded with his Battalion in Malta, possibly en route to India. With him was his wife Christina Hood Brett, born in 1889 in Hong Kong whom he married at Steyning in Sussex in March 1907. Also with him was his son Thomas Edward Hood Brett, born in 1910 in York. By this time he had become a senior NCO. The 1st Battalion arrived at Plymouth from India on 19 Nov 1914 and were then sent to France. As part of 81st Brigade and 27th Division, they were deployed to Belgium and took part in various actions around Ypres during 1915-Gravenstafel, St Julien, Frezenberg and Bellewerde. The 1st were deployed to the Salonika Front in Nov 1915 but it seems that Ernest may not have gone with them. In the Beverley Guardian of 16 Sep 1916, it notes that Ernest was “in France”; indeed it seems he had transferred to the 14th Battalion of the Highlanders and was now Battalion Sergeant Major, perhaps giving his experience to a recently raised Battalion. On 26 Jan 1917 he was commissioned, attached to the Labour Corps and then to the 7th Battalion, Border Regiment.
At the time of Ernest’s death, his wife and son were staying with relatives at 85 Grovehill Rd. They later emigrated to Durban, South Africa. Ernest’s older brother, Arthur also served: in the Royal Engineers at Gibraltar, and in charge of the regimental shoe shop, he died of septicaemia on 18 May 1916 and was buried there. Younger brother, Reginald, served briefly in the West Yorkshire Regiment before being invalided out in Dec 1914 following appendicitis.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |