Richard Sydney Juckes Private 437994 - 14th Bn. Canadian Infantry (Montreal) Regiment Killed in action on Tuesday 27th June 1916, age 24 No known grave but is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres. Belgium Richard Sydney Juckes was born late 1891 in Chetwynd to 42-year-old Thomas Juckes, a farmer of 42 acres, from High Ercall, and 33-year-old Annie, nee Marsh, from Manchester. In 1901 the family were at Woodseaves, High Offley, and Thomas was listed as a publican. Six of the nine children children (including Richard) were still at home. In 1911 Richard, aged 20, was working as a farm servant for dairy farmer Cyril Hewitt Ball in Knightley, However, the following year he sailed for Canada, on 23 March 1912, Liverpool to Nova Scotia. He enlisted as Private 437994 in the 14th Battalion, Canadian Infantry (Montreal) Regiment. Richard was killed in action on Tuesday 27th June 1916, aged 24. He has no known grave but is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres. Belgium, Panel 24 - 26 - 28 – 30. The official record states: “Son of Annie Juckes, of 90, Lime St., Wolverhampton, England, and the late Thomas Juckes.”

Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres. Historical Information The Menin Gate is one of four memorials to the missing in Belgian Flanders which cover the area known as the Ypres Salient. Broadly speaking, the Salient stretched from Langemarck in the north to the northern edge in Ploegsteert Wood in the south, but it varied in area and shape throughout the war. The Salient was formed during the First Battle of Ypres in October and November 1914, when a small British Expeditionary Force succeeded in securing the town before the onset of winter, pushing the German forces back to the Passchendaele Ridge. The Second Battle of Ypres began in April 1915 when the Germans released poison gas into the Allied lines north of Ypres. This was the first time gas had been used by either side and the violence of the attack forced an Allied withdrawal and a shortening of the line of defence. The battles of the Ypres Salient claimed many lives on both sides and it quickly became clear that the commemoration of members of the Commonwealth forces with no known grave would have to be divided between several different sites. The site of the Menin Gate was chosen because of the hundreds of thousands of men who passed through it on their way to the battlefields. It commemorates casualties from the forces of Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and United Kingdom who died in the Salient. In the case of United Kingdom casualties, only those prior 16 August 1917 (with some exceptions). United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after that date are named on the memorial at Tyne Cot, a site which marks the furthest point reached by Commonwealth forces in Belgium until nearly the end of the war. New Zealand casualties that died prior to 16 August 1917 are commemorated on memorials at Buttes New British Cemetery and Messines Ridge British Cemetery. The YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL now bears the names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known.