In Memory of

Private Harold Grundy

9443
A Squadron 18th (Queen Mary’s Own) Hussars
Killed in Action 21st November 1917 Age 24

Harold was the son of the late Allan and Elizabeth Grundy, and the brother of Mrs. Redfern of 49 Fairclough Street, Earlestown, who it was received the news of his death. He was an old Wesleyan School scholar and worked at the Collins Green Colliery.

He had been associated with the 18th Hussars for six years and before the outbreak of war was stationed at Tidworth. He was wounded in the Battle of Loos, and sent to Edinburgh to recuperate. He then went through some severe fighting in France attached to a Hotchkiss gun detachment.

Harold’s obituary published in the NEG on 14th December 1917 includes a letter to his sister from his Commanding Officer, Lieutenant L. S. Lloyd who explained that Harold had “died at his post, fighting his Hotchkiss gun to the last. I am very sorry to say that we could get no effects – as the German attack swept over the ground where Pte. Grundy lay – and when the regiment retook the ground the Germans had removed the body, having evidently taken it back for burial. Your brother was killed instantaneously. He was at the time in the very hottest part of the fight – doing splendid work. The place was a village called Noyelles, about 6 miles south-west of Cambrai.”

What happened to Harold’s body is not known. His name is on the Cambrai Memorial, Louverval, sixteen miles south-west of Cambrai. At the entrance is the following inscription: “To the Glory of God and to the enduring memory of 7048 Officers and Men of the Forces of the British Empire who fell at the Battle of Cambrai between the 20th November and the 3rd December 1917, whose names are here recorded but to whom the fortunes of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.”