Selected Biographies

Coe, George – Born: Long Melford, Suffolk on 27.11.1885.  Parents: George John Coe (Farmer) and Rosa [née Bigg].  Family Connections: Brother to William Coe [b1891]; also, cousin of William Charles Coe [b1889].  Home: Moorhouse Farm, Boxted, Suffolk (1891), 17 Clarkson Street, Ipswich (1901).  Occupation: Head of the Stationery Department, Colombo Apothecaries Company in Ceylon.  Service Record: From October 1914 George served as C/Sgt.1367 with the Contingent Company, Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps.  He was posted to Egypt from 17.11.1914 where he became Instructor to the Australian and New Zealand Contingent.  He was commissioned on 19.4.1916 as a Second Lieutenant in 1^st Battalion, Border Regiment and posted on 3.8.1915 to Gallipoli, taking part in the attack on Hill 70 on 21.8.1915, as part of 87^th Brigade, 29^th Division.  While serving in the Dardanelles he contracted dysentery and was hospitalised to England.  On 18.3.1916 he was posted to France with 11^th [Service] Battalion, Border Regiment [Lonsdale Pals], part of 97^th Brigade, 32^nd Division.  At the end of June, the Lonsdale Pals occupied trenches in the area of Authuille Wood, a few miles from Albert in the Somme valley.  On 1.7.1916 after days of bombardment, an all-out Allied attack was made against the German positions, the 97^th Brigade being tasked with neutralising the heavily defended Leipzig redoubt.  As the Lonsdales left the safety of Authuille Wood they were scythed down in a hail of machine-gun fire from the German lines, killing or wounding over 500 men.  This the first day of the Battle of the Somme, claimed nearly 20,000 Allied lives, including that of George Coe.  Died: George was killed in action at the head of his platoon.  He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme [pier and face 6a and 7c], Somme, France and on the Long Melford War Memorial.[1]

Coe, George John – Born: Liston, Essex in 1859.  Parents: George James Coe of Long Melford (Farmer) and Frances Amelia [née Barber].  Family Connections: Father of George Coe [b1885] and William Coe [b1891]; also, uncle of William Charles Coe [b1889]; Home: Liston Place, Liston, Essex (1861), High Street, Long Melford (1871), Lodge Farm, Hare Drift, Long Melford (1881), Moorhouse Farm, Boxted, Suffolk (1891), Lodge Farm, Hare Drift, Long Melford (1901 and 1911), 2 Westgate Terrace, Long Melford [1916], The Grove, Ballingdon, Essex [1934].  Occupation: Farmer (1881 to 1911).  Married: Rosa Bigg in 1882.  Service Record: George Coe was a Melford Rural District Councillor during the Great War, a member of the Long Melford Volunteer Training Corps in 1915 and an attendee of the Melford Military Service Tribunal from 1916.  Died: Ballingdon, Essex on 13.7.1934.[2]

Coe, William – Born: Boxted, Suffolk on 30.9.1891.  Parents: George John Coe (Farmer) and Rosa [née Bigg].  Family Connections: Brother to George Coe [b1885] and cousin of William Charles Coe [b1889]; also, son-in-law of John Palmer Randle [b1870] and brother-in-law of Graydon Palmer Randle [b1896] and Austin Jarvis Palmer Randle [b1899].  Home: Lodge Farm, Hare Drift, Long Melford (1901), 3 Bulwer Road, Leytonstone, London (1911), Lodge Farm, Hare Drift, Long Melford [1918], Glebe Side, Halstead, Essex (1939), Red Cottage, Melford Road, Sudbury [1953].  Occupation: Underwriter’s Clerk (1911), Brewer’s Invoice Clerk and Air Raid Warden (1939).  Married: Augusta Violet Palmer Randle of Long Melford in 1923.  Service Record: William enlisted as Pte.1563, later N^o. 305045 with 1/1^st Suffolk Yeomanry in the Corps of Hussars.  He was granted a commission on 27.8.1915 as a Second Lieutenant in ‘D’ Company, 1^st Battalion, Border Regiment.  On 8.10.1915 he was posted to Cape Helles Gallipoli, evacuated in January 1916 to Egypt and posted with his battalion to France in March 1916.  As part of 29^th Division’s 87^th Brigade, he saw action during the Somme Offensive of 1916 and the Third Battles of Ypres in 1917.  In the spring of 1918 however, his battalion was badly mauled and thrown into retreat by the enemy’s Lys Offensive, which punched a gaping hole in the British front line.  The pivotal day for the 1^st Borders came on 11.4.1918 when they were ordered to form a defensive position around the village of Neuf-Berquin, in an attempt to slow the German advance.  This proved impossible forcing them over the next twenty-four hours to make a hurried withdrawal, at the end of which barely two hundred men remained.  By 4:00pm of that day the Battalion’s War Diary noted that ‘two platoons of ‘D’ Company could not be extricated and were last seen surrounded but still fighting’; as a subaltern in this company, it is likely that William Coe was with these men when he was captured.  German records show that he was wounded in the back and stomach and taken to a field hospital in Armentieres, before being incarcerated in a Prisoner of War camp at Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.  He was repatriated in December 1918.  In 1922 William is recorded as one of the 14 vice-presidents of the Long Melford Ex-Service Men’s Club.  Died: Sudbury, Suffolk on 5.11.1953.[3]

Coe, William Charles – Born: Long Melford, Suffolk on 2.11.1889.  Parents: Henry James Coe (Farmer) and Ellen Mary [née Bacon].  Family Connections: Cousin of George Coe [b1885] and William Coe [b1891]; also, nephew of George John Coe [b1859].  Home: Living with Edward Elliston (Stepfather) at The Six Bells, Cockfield, Felsham, Suffolk (1901), West Green Cottages, East Bergholt, Essex (1911).  Occupation: Mill Hand in a Flour Mill (1911).  Service Record: Attested as Pte.26299 with 2^nd Battalion, Essex Regiment, part of 12^th Brigade, 4^th Division.  Died: William was recorded as missing, presumed killed in action on 23.10.1916, during a failed attack launched from Trônes Wood, near Guillemont in the Somme sector.  He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme [pier and face 10d], Somme, France and on the Long Melford War Memorial.[4]

Notes – [1] Date of birth from the Baptism Register 25.12.1885, Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford.  His letter home is reprinted as ‘Bullets in the Desert’ ‘Long Melford Man’s Experiences in Egypt’ in Suffolk and Essex Free Press 10.3.1915.  For details of the action in Gallipoli see 1^st Borderer’s War Diary [WO 95/4311] and of the action in France see 11^th Border’s War Diary [WO 95/2403/1] and Chris M^cCarthy, The Somme: The Day-by-Day Account [London: Brockhampton Press, 1998], p.27.  See also his Commonwealth War Graves Commission record and Service Medal and Award Rolls Index Cards 1914-1922 [WO 372].   [2] For Training Corps article see Suffolk and Essex Free Press 10.3.1915.  Date of death from the National Probate Calendar.  [3] Date of birth from the 1939 Register for Halstead, Essex.  See also his Service Medal and Award Rolls 1914-1918 [WO 329], which records that William Coe was commissioned on 27.8.1917 and attached to 3^rd [Reserve] Battalion, Border Regiment.  For details of 1^st Border’s movements on the Western Front see War Diary [WO 95/2305/1].  For PoW register see International Committee of the Red Cross [file ref: PA26245] and the account in the Long Melford Parish Magazine May 1918.  See also his Service Medal and Award Rolls 1914-1918 [WO 329] and Service Medal and Award Rolls Index Cards 1914-1922 [WO 372].  Date of death from the National Probate Calendar.  [4] Date of birth from the Baptism Register 2.11.1889, Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford.  For details of the action see 2^nd Essex’s War Diary [WO 95/1505/1] and Chris M^cCarthy, The Somme: The Day-by-Day Account [London: Brockhampton Press, 1998], pp.140-41.  The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records him as Pte.26799.  See also his British Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929 file [ref: 556157] and Service Medal and Award Rolls Index Cards 1914-1922 [WO 372].