Pte 50675 George Edmund Relph

Details of the events are contained in the battalion War Diary:

By the 25^th April the battalion had taken up positions of readiness in the Voormezeele sector south of Ypres.  According to the battalion War Diary, on the night of the 27^th, at 8.30 p.m. they moved to the line to relieve 4^th Bn, relief completed about 1 a.m.

28^th – At about 1 p.m. a company of composite battalion gave way on the left of our line and the Bosche penetrated from the Canal Bank to the left of my battalion front, which position he maintained despite 5 hours fighting. My reserve company was ordered to counter-attack and restore the position at 7.45 p.m. but enemy laid down a barrage at 7.43 a.m. and the counter attack was unable to proceed. The enemy bombardment lasted until 10.30 p.m. and I then organised a defensive flank.

Casualties for 28/4/1918:

Officers: 2 Killed;  O.R: 17 Killed, 80 Wounded.

 

George was one of those killed in action, he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium.

Those United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after August 16th 1917 are named on the Tyne Cot Memorial, a site which marks the furthest point reached by Commonwealth forces in Belgium until nearly the end of the war.

The Tyne Cot Memorial now bears the names of almost 35,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial, designed by Sir Herbert Baker with sculpture by Joseph Armitage and F.V. Blundstone, was unveiled by Sir Gilbert Dyett on 20 June 1927.

The memorial forms the north-eastern boundary of Tyne Cot Cemetery, which was established around a captured German blockhouse or pill-box used as an advanced dressing station.

His death was reported in the Penrith Observer on 21st May 1918:

“Private George E. Relph, Liverpool Regiment, the son of Mr. E. Relph, Newbiggin, Dacre, was killed in action on April 28th.  Relph, who was only 19 years of age, was in the employ of the late Mr. John Swinburn, Gowbarrow Hall, when he joined in February 1917.  He had been in France since July.”

His Army effects, Army Pay £3 10s 1d and a War Gratuity of £4-10s went to his father. The pension card shows that a pension of 5/- a week was awarded to his mother, from November 1918, living in Temple Sowerby, 8 miles east of Penrith.

On the 1921 Census in Askham, his father, is aged 51, and is a gardener for the Earl of Lonsdale at Lowther Gardens, his mother, Sarah, is aged 46, with Frank aged 6.

His mother died in 1922 aged 52.

 

Her death was reported in the Penrith Observer on Tuesday 21st November 1922;

DEATH.

RELPH. - At Temple Sowerby, on the 21st inst., Sarah, the beloved wife of Edmund Relph, aged 52 years. To be interred at Temple Sowerby on Thursday, the 23rd inst., at 2-30 p.m. Friends please accept this intimation.

His only brother Charles died at the age of 22 in 1927.

 

In 1939 his father, aged 67, is working as a general labourer, and is living with youngest daughter Annie, 26, in Linden House, Temple Sowerby.

 

He died, in 1947, aged 74.

 

Sadly, George has not been found on any local memorial, including the Askham Memorial, the Town of Penrith Plaque, or the Temple Sowerby Memorial Hall Plaque. The only Relph on the Askham Memorial is his cousin Frederick W. Relph, killed in 1917 with the Lancashire Fusiliers, also aged 19.