In Memory of ERNEST ORCHARD Private 28027 2nd Battalion Sherwood Foresters (Notts & Derby) Regiment Who died on Wednesday, 9th August 1915 Age 18 No Known Grave Panel 39 & 41 Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, Ypres, Belgium Commemorated in Perpetuity by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission & Remembered with Honour

The Menin Gate, Ypres, Belgium1

Ernest Orchard was born in Beeston, Notts in 1897², the second eldest surviving son of Joseph Albert & Edith Annie (née Lawton) Orchard.

By 1901, Joseph Albert (b. Nottingham, 1871) was working as a lace threader, while his wife (b. c1869, Sibthorpe, Notts) worked as a lace curtain machinist. Their six children, including the four-year-old Ernest, appear to be cared for by their aunt, Hannah Peach, while their mother worked, all living at their home, together with a boarder, at 92 Upper Regent Street, Beeston³. By 1911, the family had moved to 30/32 William Street, Beeston with seven of their 11 surviving children still at home. Joseph Albert was working as a foundry labourer and Ernest, now aged 14, had started work as a carrier⁴.

Ernest responded to the call at the very beginning of the War, enlisting in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, before being transferred to the 2nd Battalion Sherwood Foresters. Part of the regiment's regular Army, 2nd Battalion was based in Sheffield at the outbreak of war and had moved to Cambridge before landing in France on 11th September 1914. There it had immediately become involved in bitter fighting in the Battle of the Aisne, as part of 71st Brigade in 6th Division⁵. By the time that Private Orchard joining the battalion in France on 28 April 1915,after basic training in England, the Western Front had developed the trench warfare that has become the terrible defining feature that was the continue for most of the remainder of the war.

Private Ernest Orchard was killed on 9th August 1915. Although no war diaries appear to survive for the Battalion at that time⁶, it seems likely that he fell during the continuing fighting in the Ypres Salient, probably during the battle which resulted in Hooge being retaken by the British. He is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, as one of the large number of casualties from the Salient who were never identified

Back in Beeston, the sorrow of his family who received the tragic news, was unlikely to be eased by the sad routine that followed - the payment of his backpay of £2 2s 8d, a gratuity payment of £3 and the receipt of his medals - the British and Victory Medals and the 1915 Star - after the war⁶.

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Footnotes
¹The photograph of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. (http://www.cwgc.org)
^2>He was registered as \'Ernest Frederick\', in Basford Registration District, 7b 223
³1901 Census : Piece 3153 Folio 119 - 92 Upper Regent Street, Beeston
⁴1911 Census : Piece 20432 RD429 SD3 ED7 Schedule 18 - 30/32 William Street, Beeston. The family's address was recorded as 22 Alpine Cottages, William Street, Beeston in the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
⁵Details of this phase of the war are at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Aisne
⁶The surviving diaries for 2nd Battalion start on 2nd November, 1915. By this date the Battalion was at St Jean, east of Ypres and was recording that, after heavy rain, the trenches were flooded and falling in and were 'worse than any we have yet experienced'.
⁶Army Registers of Soldiers' Effect, 1901-1928. WW1 Service Medal & Award Rolls.

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