Edwin Brough
Private 12229 - 9th Bn. North Stafford Regiment
Killed in action in France on Friday 5th October 1917 aged 24
No known grave but is commemorated on the Tyne Cot
Memorial, Zonnebeke, Belgium
Edwin Brough, the son of George and Ellen Brough was born in Gnosall in 1892.
On the 1881 census George and Ellen were living at Audmore.
The 1891 census indicates they were living in Audmore Road above
the Knightley Road turnoff.
Edwin is on the 1901 census aged 8 and the family had moved to
Back Lane.
By the 1911 census George and Ellen were living in Cross Street
next door to their son William.
Edwin was working as a waggoner on a farm near to Burton on
Trent.
He joined the North Staffordshire Regiment, 9
th
Bn. (private 12229)
in Burton-on-Trent and first ‘joined the theatre of war’ in France on
the 27
th
July 1915.
In April 1915 the 9
th
Bn. had joined the 37
th
Division as a Pioneer
Battalion, whose historical role was to aid other arms in heavy work
such as the construction of field fortifications, military camps, roads
and bridges. Pioneers were also often engaged in the construction
and repair of military railways. The battalion landed at Le Havre in July 1915.
By 1917 the battalion was at Broodseinde near Ypres in Flanders where a successful
battle was fought on the 4
th
of October. However after a somewhat dry but unsettled
period, rain began again in earnest on that day and the troops, guns and ammunition had
had to move forward through an area devastated by shell fire and the heavy rain. They
were pushing the Germans back but onto far less damaged ground.
Edwin Brough did not live to take part in the next planned attack: on the 5
th
of October he
was killed in action, aged 24.
His
body
was
not
recovered
and
he
is
now
commemorated
on
the
Tyne
Cot
Memorial
in
Zonnebeke,
Belgium.
He
was
awarded
the
British
War
and
Victory
medals
and
the
1915
Star.
Younger brother of John Brough reported missing in 1918 .
Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke,
Historical Information
'Tyne Cot' or 'Tyne Cottage' was the name given by the Northumberland Fusiliers to a barn
which stood near the level crossing on the Passchendaele-Broodseinde road. The barn,
which had become the centre of five or six German blockhouses, or pill-boxes, was
captured by the 3rd Australian Division on 4 October 1917, in the advance on
Passchendaele.
One of these pill-boxes was unusually large and was used as an advanced dressing
station after its capture. From 6 October to the end of March 1918, 343 graves were made,
on two sides of it, by the 50th (Northumbrian) and 33rd Divisions, and by two Canadian
units. The cemetery was in German hands again from 13 April to 28 September, when it
was finally recaptured, with Passchendaele, by the Belgian Army.
It was greatly enlarged after the Armistice when remains were brought in from the
battlefields of Passchendaele and Langemarck, and from a few small burial grounds.
It is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world in terms of burials. At the
suggestion of King George V, who visited the cemetery in 1922, the Cross of Sacrifice was
placed on the original large pill-box. There are three other pill-boxes in the cemetery.