| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Private Samuel Gardiner, aged 29, enlisted at Beverley the 3 Dec 1914, having been “given leave of absence until the end of the war” by St Mary’s Boys’ School, Mill Lane, Beverley, where he was an Assistant Master. He survived the war and captivity in a German POW camp and returned home on 10 Dec 1918, resuming his teaching job in the spring of 1919. He was still an elementary teacher in 1939 on the eve of the next war. He was awarded the War and Victory medals.
Samuel was in the 5th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment (the Green Howards) also referred to as the Beverley Terriers. Until May 1916 he was in the UK and for nine months served as a lance-corporal reverting to private when he went to France on 20 May. He received unknown wounds on the Somme on 11 November and was taken by 2nd Northumberland Field Ambulance to the 13th Casualty Clearing Station, rejoining his Battalion on 23 November. He was posted as missing on 23 Apr 1917 in the 2nd Battle of the Scarpe, part of the Battle of Arras. He spent the rest of the war in captivity.
Samuel was born in Hull the 2 Jul 1885, the son of John Robert Gardiner, of Bempton, a draper, and Elizabeth Gardiner of Beverley. He had three sisters. The family spent time in Driffield and Hull before moving to Ash Tree Grove, Holme Church Lane, Beverley. Later he lived at 23 Butcher Row with his now widowed mother and his widowed sister, Grace Ellen Dukes who had a “fancy goods shop”. Grace had five young children.
Samuel was initially a “pupil teacher” and worked at Holy Trinity School, Gainsborough before joining St Mary’s in 1905 as a certified teacher. Samuel married Edith Thompson in 1911, their only child, John, died shortly after birth in 1912. The couple continued to live in Beverley in the Manor Road area. Samuel died on 1 Feb 1952, Edith later that same year.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |