Current Information:

Age-27

Born-West Ham

Coulommiers Communal Cemetery, France

After the opening battles of the war at Mons on 23rd August, 1914 and Le Cateau on 26th August, the British Army (BEF), in conjunction with the French Army, began a retreat that took them all the way back to the River Marne, 200 miles to the south. With the Germans in hot pursuit they were forced to fight a series of rear guard actions as they fell back in extremely hot weather. The Great Retreat, as it became known, came to an end on 5th September, 1914 when the allied forces attacked along the River Marne and drove the Germans back to the River Aisne.

One of the units involved in this was the 2nd Essex battalion of 12 Brigade, 4th Division which had seen action during the Battle of Le Cateau and by 14th September, 1914, the day on which Ernest Jude died from wounds, they were engaged in the Battle of the Aisne. However, that he is buried in a cemetery further south, suggests that he was wounded during the fighting on the Marne, earlier in the month.