Alderley -World War 1.January 1918

We will remember them January 1918

Bad weather on the Western Front after the battles of Passchendaele and Cambrai in the autumn of 1917 reduced all activity during the winter to the daily exchange of fire and consolidation of defences.

So mercifully there were no Alderley Edge deaths in action in December, January or February.  However, one man commemorated on the war memorial died in January in the Military Hospital in Darlington. 

Sam Henshaw joined the Royal Engineers in November 1915 and served in the 488^th Field Company. 

We have no information about his service, but we do know that he was taken into hospital on 13^th January with pneumonia and died five days later.  Born in 1890 to John and Eliza Henshaw, he was the youngest of four surviving children. They were a well-established local family.

His grandfather was Alderley Edge’s first postmaster and both his father and his mother were born in the village.  He went to the village school.  In 1911 he was living with his widowed mother and elder brother in Chapel Road and working as a gardener.  He was buried in the family grave at St Bartholomew’s after a service at St Philip’s.

This month saw two people from Alderley Edge honoured.  In the New Year Honours

Mrs Emily Hutton, Commandant of the Brookdale Military Hospital, was awarded the OBE. 

And at the end of the month the Advertiser reported that Captain R F Cooper, the son of the Vicar, had been awarded the Military Cross for his part in a raid in the largely forgotten campaign in Salonika.

 An allied force occupied Salonika in 1915 in order to open a route to help Serbia resist Austrian invasion. It was too late to prevent the collapse of Serbia, but the allied force remained in Salonika for the rest of the war, holding a 90 mile front against Bulgaria, an ally of Germany and Austria.  Bulgaria was finally forced to surrender in September 1918.