| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Private Jack Holmes, aged 31, was killed in action on 13 Apr 1918, but it was nearly a year before his death was confirmed to his parents, as reported in the Beverley Guardian of 3 May 1919. He is buried at the Ration Farm Military Cemetery, La Chapelle-D’Amentieres in France. Jack was awarded the War and Victory Medals in addition to the 1914-15 Star.
Jack enlisted early in the war at Hull and was originally in the Army Supply Corps (ASC). He arrived in France on 30 Aug 1915. He served in the 30th Divisional Supply Column and was in an ASC Motorised Transport Company. The DSC was responsible for supplying goods, equipment and ammunition from the Divisional railhead to the Divisional Refilling Point and, if conditions were right, to the dumps and stores of the forward units. Like many in the ASC, Jack was shifted to the infantry, in his case, the Welsh Regiment, when shortages emerged, probably in late 1917 or early 1918.
Jack was born in Beverley in 1886. He was one of four sons born to Thomas Holmes and his wife Fanny. Thomas was a farm labourer, born in Meaux, by 1891 he was a tanner’s labourer and his family of six children had moved into Beverley to live, originally in Lurk Lane and then Wilbert Lane. At the time of the war they lived at 22 Queensgate. Jack is recorded as a “miller’s errand boy” in 1901. He is, however, recorded in the local press in the war as living at 48 Albemarle Street, York with his wife. It is not known if they had children.
Jack is remembered on the Hengate Memorial but not on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |