Current Information:

Age-23

Born-Gibraltar

The Race to the Sea - September-October 1914

By the middle of September 1914, the Aisne battlefield had stagnated into trench warfare and in order to break this impasse, both sides tried to outflank each other in a general movement northwards. Moving up through Picardy, Artois & Flanders, the race was over by 19th October when the North Sea was reached. The Western Front, a line of trenches stretching from Belgium to Switzerland, was now a reality. Initially it was the French army that conducted this movement whilst the British Expeditionary Force remained on the Aisne but by 6 October British reinforcements were needed to help beat off German attacks around Lille. They moved north and along with reinforcements from Britain, they took up new positions in Flanders, on the left of the Allied line and much closer to the Channel ports.

The Battle of Messines - 12th October-2nd November 1914

The Battle of Messines was one of the actions that took place during the Race to the Sea and it took place between the Comines-Ypres canal and the River Douvre. It involved the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions and elements of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Divisions as well part of the Indian Division.

From 24-26th October, the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers battalion of 12 Brigade, 4th Division were into trenches near Armentières and on the latter date moved back to billets but only spent a day there because during the evening of the 27th October they returned to the same trenches. At 2am on 28th October, the day on which Albert Jones was killed, the enemy made a night attack which was repulsed and then kept up a bombardment of the battalion’s trenches throughout the day. There was also an attack on the trenches held by 1st East Yorkshire which a company of 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers helped to disperse.