Name
Reuben Packham
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
08/08/1918
30
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
G/4674
Royal Sussex Regiment
7th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
BEACON CEMETERY, SAILLY-LAURETTE
V. I. 5.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial, St Mary's Church Roll of Honour (Book), Hitchin
Pre War
He was born in Burgess Hill in Sussex and worked as a bricklayer at Temple Dinsley.
He volunteered in November 1914 by enlisting in Hitchin His home was at 71, Lancaster Ave, Hitchin and he left a widow and child.
Wartime Service
Reuben was given the Regimental Number G/4674. He was posted to the 7th Battalion of the Regiment into a Lewis-gun section. The Battalion was part of the 36th Brigade in the 12th Division of III Corps in the 4th Army in France. By February 1916 he was on the Western Front and fought at Arras, Cambrai in 1917, on the Somme, at St. Quentin in May 1917 where he was wounded and during the Retreat of March 1918.
His death coincides with the Battle of Amiens when the Division was astride the Bray to Corbie road. At the time the 36th Brigade had been ‘borrowed’ by the 18th Division the previous day due to the exhaustion of the 54th Brigade in counter attacks.
On the day of his death he met his brother in the trenches for the first time in two years. They went "over the top" together in the same attack but became separated. Later it was discovered that Reuben was missing.
He was buried in Plot 5, Row I, Grave 5 in the Beacon Cemetery, Sailly-Laurette, east of Amiens in France.
Acknowledgments
Adrian Dunne, David C Baines, Jonty Wild
