Fredrick George Marshall

Memorial: Chipping Sodbury Town Cross - Broad Street

Regiment: Somerset Light Infantry

Rank and number: Private 11708

Parents: George and Eliza Marshall

Home address: Rounceval Street, Chipping Sodbury, Bristol

Pre-war occupation: Builder’s labourer

Date of birth: 1895

Date of death: 08/07/1915

Buried/Commemorated at: Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Ypres, Belgium

Age: 20

Further information:

Fred was the eldest of seven children with two younger brothers and four sister who lived in Rounceval Street (where today’s Rounceval Hotel is) with their parents, George and Eliza. In 1914 the town would have been full of speculation and excitement. A detachment of 5th Battalion Loyal North Lancs (Territorial) Regiment had already taken up station in Chipping Sodbury. For the boys, there was much eagerness to enrol in one of the many visiting local Regiments. Fred Marshall’s decision was to enrol with the Somerset Light Infantry, and he was allocated to their 1st Battalion, by 7th April 1915 he was already in France with them

Fred was just a year younger than Percy Dash, Percy had been Fred’s fellow new recruit from the Sodburys; Fred and Percy had been through school together. On 7th April 1915 Fred arrived in France. Fred’s Battalion was deployed from the outset on this already-notorious low ridge around Ypres. This ‘ridge’ stretched from the Channel at Zeebrugge down to the French border and its rivers Marne and Seine. Before getting that far, this ‘ridge’ went either side of the ancient Belgian town of Ypres, and through the farms and fields around it. Fred was to get no further along this Salient than did Percy Dash six months before him, albeit to the west of Ypres rather than the east. He fell on 8th July 1915, just three months after he first arrived in France

Fred was buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, just five miles to the west of Ypres. This was on the site of the old Casualty Clearing Station at Poperinghe. The hospital was the largest evacuation hospital along the Ypres Salient. And as Lijssenthoek Cemetery it would become the second largest British Cemetery in Belgium, with nearly 11,000 casualties from WW1, of whom nearly 10,000 are identified

Fredrick Marshall is remembered on the Chipping Sodbury and District War Memorial Cottage Hospital board, now at Yate and District Heritage Centre under Chipping Sodbury

By kind permission, this information is based on the following source(s):

Alison Benton, 'Remembered with Honour'