We Will Remember Them.......
Last month we commemorated Private Gilbert Edward Davies, one of two men from Alderley Edge who were killed in the last weeks of the Gallipoli campaign. This month we commemorate the other: Corporal Frank Barrow.
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In Memory of Corporal Frank Barrow2305 1st/7th Bn., Cheshire Regiment who died on 5th December 1915. Age 22 |
Frank Barrow was born in Mobberley on 21st January 1893, the son of John and Annie Barrow. John was a bricklayer. By 1911 the family had moved to London Road, where Annie kept a confectioner’s shop. By this time, Frank, aged 18, was an apprentice in the warehouse of S and J Watts, Manchester.
His army number (2305) indicates that he joined the Cheshire Regiment soon after the outbreak of war. The 1/7th battalion was despatched to Gallipoli in July 1915, landing at Suvla Bay on 9th August. The landing was totally mismanaged by the incompetent Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stopford, who was dismissed after a week. By that time, however, Turkish reinforcements had confined the British forces to a narrow bridgehead from which they were unable to break out. Trench warfare ensued, but what was worse was that the troops had to endure appalling conditions.
The summer heat and lack of sanitation led to epidemic sickness. Frank Barrow was one of the many who were killed not by the enemy but by the conditions. On 5th December he died from pneumonia at a Field Ambulance Station at Mudros on the Greek island of Limnos, where a number of hospitals had been established to receive casualties from Gallipoli. He is buried at East Mudros Military Cemetery. His brother Fred also served in the 1/7th Cheshires and was wounded in the Gallipoli campaign, but appears to have survived the war.
If you know of Alderley Edge men who served in the war and returned home afterwards, we should be glad to hear of them.