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Corporal Arthur Grice of the 102nd (Infantry) Battalion, Machine Gun Corps, aged 25, died of wounds the 25 Oct 1918 and is buried at Auberchicourt British Cemetery in France. He was taking part in the final assaults on the German line in France in the vicinity of Douai and Valenciennes in France. According to his commanding officer Major Dalton White, Arthur “was going forward with a small party of ammunition carriers, to his section which was in the line, and while crossing a nasty crossroads, which was being shelled by the enemy, a shrapnel shell burst high over them.”
Arthur was taken to a nearby dressing station and then to the casualty clearing section but he was “dangerously wounded” and could not be saved. White said “the whole of the company and myself held the highest opinion” of him and had always “set a splendid example”. Arthur was awarded the War and Victory Medals.
Before the-war Arthur had been in the East Riding Yeomanry (Territorial Force) and later served with the 1st Battalion in Egypt, undertaking mounted desert patrols, and then in 1917 in Palestine where he was involved in the defeat of the Turkish forces. In Apr 1918 the 1st were converted into an infantry machine gun unit and arrived in France in Jun 1918. Three weeks prior to his death in France he had been on home leave.
Arthur was born in October 1893 in Beverley. His parents John and Martha Alice Grice (nee Webster) came from North Yorkshire between Malton and Scarborough and John had been a farm labourer and corn warehouseman. In the early 1890s they moved to Beverley and lived at Enfields, Railway Terrace. They had five children in total. Upon John’s death in 1897, Arthur’s mother married Robert Andrew a farm worker and later a carter from Roxby, Lincolnshire. They had two sons and lived at 40 Trinity Terrace. Unmarried, Arthur worked as a tanner’s labourer but before the war was working for Cussons grocery in Hull.
Arthur is remembered on the Hengate Memorial, on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster and on the Beverley Oddfellows Roll of Honour in the Memorial Hall.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |