Name
Bertram Waller
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
07/08/1917
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
TF/238036
Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment)
12th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL
Panel 49-51
Belgium
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial, St Mary's Church Roll of Honour (Book), Hitchin
Pre War
His wife was Mrs E. Waller of St. Andrew's Schoolhouse, Hitchin and they had two children.
Before being called up he had worked for G.W. Russell & Son at the Tanyard in Hitchin for seventeen years. He was on the committee of the Union Jack Football Club and was a player for the Blue Cross Football Club. He was born in Hitchin and was a resident there, but enlisted in Bedford.
Wartime Service
Bertram was given the Regimental Number TF202664 in the Essex Regiment, but was later transferred as Number TF238036 to the 12th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment which was in the 54th Brigade of the 18th Division of II Corps in the 5th Army. He was killed in action in Belgium. At the time of his death he had not long been discharged from hospital with trench fever having previously been grazed on the face by shrapnel.
The time of his death was just before the capture of Westhoek and after the Battle of Pilchem in the Ypres Salient. On the 2nd August 1917 the Battalion went to Sanctuary Wood and the next day went into the front line near Stirling Castle. As the Middlesex moved up, to leave the duckboard tracks was to risk death by drowning. The weather was dull and misty and the battle area was a sodden quagmire.
He has no known grave, but is remembered on Panels 49 & 51 of the Men in Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres in Belgium.
Acknowledgments
Adrian Dunne, David C Baines, Jonty Wild
