Current Information:

Age-19

28, Adelaide Road, Brockley

Essex Farm Cemetery, Belgium

On Christmas Day, 1916, 17th King’s Royal Rifle Corps of 117 Brigade, 39th Division moved in the front line in the Canal Bank sector of the Ypres salient, with the Battalion HQ at the Trois Tours Chateau. It did not turn out to be a good Christmas for the battalion. At 9 o’clock that evening the British artillery bombarded the German lines opposite and in the inevitable retaliation by the enemy guns nine men were killed and a further five wounded. Herbert Matthews was one of those killed.