3363 Pte Eric Raymond Cornall, 1/4th Gloucestershire Regiment

3363 Pte Eric Raymond Cornall of the 1/4th Gloucestershire Regiment was killed on this day, 17th July, in 1916. The 1/4th (City of Bristol) Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment, was a Territorial Force battalion, and Eric's number indicates that he must have joined it on about the 10th or 11th November 1914. His medal index card (MIC) adds the initials T. R. after his number, presumably standing for 'Territorial'.

According to his MIC, Eric landed in France on 31st March 1915, having presumably been turned from a raw recruit into a Gloucestershire Regiment infantryman in under five months.

Soldiers Died in the Great War does not note a place of birth, but it gives his place of residence as Sheffield, and his place of enlistment as Bristol. There is an Eric Raymond Cornall birth registered in London in the March quarter of 1893 which, if it's the same man - as seems likely - would have made Eric 23 years old when he was killed.

Eric Cornall has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial in France.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Sources:

Ancestry.co.uk (BMD, MIC)
Army Service Numbers 1881-1918
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Soldiers Died in the Great War