| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Fred Campey was born in Beverley in Jul 1897. His family were cowkeepers and milk suppliers with land at Woodmansey and at Kitchen Lane, Beverley. His parents were Thomas Frankland and Edith Campey, nee Frost. He had three older sisters, Ella, Faith Dorothy and Ida, two older brothers, Albert and George, and a younger brother James. In 1901 they were living in Eastgate, Beverley, in 1911 they were in Woodmansey. Fred worked as a milk delivery boy and then as an apprentice builder with C F Stephenson in Beverley.
Fred joined the army in the summer of 1916 as a private in the East Yorkshire Regiment. In Dec 1916 he was transferred to the 22nd Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry (Pioneers). On 21 Mar 1918 Fred was with his Battalion on the Western Front in France when the Germans mounted a massive attack-Operation Michael, which was asuccess and forced a British retreat through the Somme battlefields, during the retreat the British Army suffered large casualties including Fred Campey whose body was never found. The Beverley Guardian of 4 May 1918 had a statement from his company officer saying that, " I feel his loss very much as he was one of our oldest men…..it may be some consolation to know that he was killed outright and felt no pain."
Fred is commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial in France, the Hengate War Memorial, the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster and on the Woodmansey, Thearne and Beverley Parks Memorial in Woodmansey village.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |