2nd Lieut Gordon Brewer Golds

• Age: 30
• From: Worthing, Sussex
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 18th Btn
• K.I.A Saturday 1st July 1916
• Commemorated at: Danzig Alley Cem, Mametz
  Panel Ref: Mem.2

Temp. 2nd Lieutenant Gordon Brewer GOLDS, 18^th Battalion KLR.

Gordon was born in Worthing, Sussex on the 09th August 1886, his birth registered in East Preston, Sussex, and was the fifth of six children born to Percy Swan Golds, and his wife, Alice (nee Kemp) who were married on the 10^th December 1877 at St Peter the Great Church, Chichester. Percy was a 25 year old grocer of Littlehampton, father John, whilst Alice was aged 27 of Chichester, father also John. Gordon was baptised on the 24^th Oct 1886 at St George's Church, Worthing,his  father was a grocers assistant of Park Terrace.    

The 1891 Census finds the family living at 1 Park Terrace, Park Road, Broadwater, Worthing, Sussex. His father is aged 38 and a grocer born in Goring, Sussex in 1852 whilst his mother is aged 41 and was born in Chichester in 1850. Gordon is 4 years of age and is shown as born in Worthing, Sussex. Three of his siblings were born in Brighton; Percy Horace b.1878, John Ernest b.1880, and Alice Jane b.1881. His other siblings were born in Worthing: Edith Jessie b.1885 and Cyril b1890. There is also a servant in the household, Harriet Jupp aged 18.

His mother died, aged 49, in 1900 in Barnet, London.

The 1901 Census finds Gordon aged 14 living at 48 Elsinore Road, Lewisham, Kent with his siblings; John Ernest an accountant's clerk aged 21, Edith Jessie aged 16 , Cyril  aged 11 and Lionel James aged 9. His widowed father Percy was living at 15 Pembroke Cottages, Pembroke Road, New Southgate, Barnet (Electoral Roll). 

Their father died aged 50 on the 31^st July 1903 in Forest Hill, Kent and was buried at East Finchley Cemetery. 

His promotion was fairly rapid and by February 1915 he was a Corporal.

Gordon applied for a commission in early 1915 which was approved and Gazetted on 08th June 1915. He transferred to the 18th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment on the 07^th April 1915.

He married Christina Marjorie Gillanders on 15th September 1915 at St Mark's Church, Purley.

Gordon crossed to France on 11th March 1916 and was attached to No 4 Company, it is known he was attached to 2 Yorkshire Regiment between 1^st and 5^th April 1916.

He was killed in action on 01^st July 1916 near Montauban and Graham Maddocks describes how as the third and fourth waves of the Pals were met by withering machine gun fire as they left the front line and made their way across No Man’s Land. He quotes the words of Private 17122 W. Gregory of the 18^th Battalion who says

“We had to get through all the barbed wire on the way. First of all you had to get up the fire-step, the ladders were on the fire-step, and our Platoon Commander, he’d just got halfway up, and he was shot through the head, he’d gone before we got out of the trench. His name was Golds. I was one of four who eventually got to the German lines out of sixteen. It was machine-gun fire that was hitting us, you could see the flash as it passed, and you knew that your friends had been hit. They were lying all over the place and some were screaming. It was awful, and I was only a kid of nineteen”.  

His body was recovered after the battle and buried in Vernon Street Cemetery, Carnoy but subsequently lost probably due to enemy shell-fire. He is now commemorated on the Dantzig Alley Memorial near Mametz. 

The village of Mametz was carried by the 7th Division on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, after very hard fighting at Dantzig Alley (a German trench) and other points. The cemetery was begun later in the same month and was used by field ambulances and fighting units until the following November. The ground was lost during the great German advance in March 1918 but regained in August, and a few graves were added to the cemetery in August and September 1918. At the Armistice, the cemetery consisted of 183 graves, now in Plot I, but it was then very greatly increased by graves (almost all of 1916) brought in from the battlefields north and east of Mametz and from certain smaller burial grounds including:

VERNON STREET CEMETERY, CARNOY, in the valley between Carnoy and Maricourt, at a place called "Squeak Forward Position". 110 soldiers who died in July-October 1916 were buried here by the 21st Infantry Brigade and other units. 

Dantzig Alley British Cemetery now contains 2,053 burials and commemorations of the First World War. 518 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 17 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of 71 casualties buried in other cemeteries, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

The cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.

Soldiers Effects to widow Christina Marjorie.

Probate was granted on 29th November 1916 to his widow in the sum of £1,285 16s and 2d.

Gordon was remembered in the Liverpool Echo on 02^nd July 1917 

Gordon is commemorated on the following Memorials:

Hall of Remembrance, Liverpool Town Hall, Panel 49

Coulsden and Purley Village Green.

Purley Hospital.

Listed in the Baltic ‘List of Members’ for 1915 working as a Clerk for Samuel Sanday & Co of Exchange Chambers, St Mary Axe. 

His widow's pension record acknowledges her remarriage. 

Gordon’s medals were sent to his widow who had remarried on the 21^st May 1917 at St Marks, Woodcote, Purley, and was living with her new husband, doctor and surgeon Harold Llewellyn James, at ‘West View’, 3 Woodcote Valley Road, Purley, Surrey.

By 1928 they had divorced and Christine remarried again to Gloucester Regiment officer William Haviland Parkinson the following year.

She died, aged 72, on the 12^th June 1969 in Cornwall (probate). 

We currently have no further information on Gordon Brewer Golds, if you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.