Early Life and Family
Alfred George Rees was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, in about February 1885. His birth was registered in the Birkenhead district, and the available record identifies his mother by the surname Collins; however, it does not establish his parents’ full names. [1]
In April 1891, six-year-old Alfred was a scholar at Birkenhead Union School in Tranmere. By 1901 he was in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, recorded as a fifteen-year-old visitor. These entries suggest a childhood and youth marked by movement between the Merseyside, Humber and Lincolnshire areas, although the surviving evidence does not safely explain the circumstances. [1]
On 26 July 1910, when he was about twenty-five, Rees was recorded at Liu-kung-tao—then commonly rendered as Wei-hai-wei—in northern China through a Freemasonry membership register. This was a British-administered territory at the time, and the entry indicates that his life had briefly extended far beyond the towns in which his early and later years are documented. [1]
Marriage and Working Life
Alfred married Florence Emily Sarah Boulter in the Elham registration district, Kent, in the final quarter of 1908. Florence, born on 10 December 1885, would later be recorded as his widow and the mother of their two children. [1]
By the census of 2 April 1911, Alfred and Florence were living at 35 Frederick Street, Lincoln. Alfred, aged twenty-six and head of the household, worked as a cylinder planer at an iron foundry: a skilled industrial occupation involving the machining and finishing of metal components. [1]
The couple’s known children were Florence Kate Elizabeth Rees and Edith Emily Mary Rees. Their father’s death in 1914 left both girls under sixteen, and their welfare became a central part of the pension claim later made by their mother. [1]
Alfred Rees was an iron-foundry worker, husband and father whose life was transformed by Britain’s call to arms in 1914.
Military Service
Rees served as Private 7741 in the 1st Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment. His military record associates him with Beverley, Yorkshire, and records service in the Western European theatre; the battalion was a Regular Army unit, based at York when war began. [2][1]
The 1st Battalion formed part of 18th Infantry Brigade, 6th Division. It mobilised with the British Expeditionary Force, moved through Edinburgh and Cambridge during August 1914, and disembarked at Saint-Nazaire, France, on 10 September. [2][1]
The unit entered the fighting on the Aisne during September 1914, after the Battle of Mons and the subsequent retreat. It was therefore among the formations committed to the widening struggle in northern France as the opposing armies attempted to outflank one another in the period later known as the “Race to the Sea”. [3][2]
Private Rees qualified for the 1914 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal, together with the Memorial Plaque sent to the next of kin of those who died in the war. His receipt of the 1914 Star confirms overseas service in the opening year of the conflict. [1]
Unit Context at Death
When Alfred Rees was killed, the 1st East Yorkshire Regiment was serving with 18th Brigade, 6th Division, in III Corps. The battalion was heavily engaged during the Battle of Armentières, fought from 13 October to 2 November 1914, a decisive phase in the struggle to secure the Channel ports and establish the Western Front. [4][5][2]
The 1st Battalion had been committed to the battle zone around Armentières as the front became increasingly continuous. The fighting involved hurried defensive action, attacks and counter-attacks, and sustained exposure to artillery and rifle fire as British, French and German forces sought to gain or retain ground before the onset of winter. [6][2]
On 20 October 1914, the date of Rees’s death, the battalion was involved in fighting south of Prémesques, between Lille and Armentières. The surviving war-diary context confirms that the 1st East Yorkshire Regiment was in action that day, but does not provide a personal account of the circumstances in which Rees was killed. [5][7]
It is important to distinguish between what is known and what is inferred. The official record states that Rees was killed in action in France on 20 October 1914; the battalion’s location and combat activity identify the wider battlefield setting, but the precise incident, weapon or place of death is not recorded in the material presently available. [7][1]
Private Rees died during the bitter October fighting that helped turn a war of movement into the entrenched Western Front.
Circumstances of Death
Private Alfred George Rees was killed in action in France on 20 October 1914. He was serving with the 1st Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, only weeks after the battalion’s arrival in France. [2][1]
The soldier’s-effects record cited in the family report contains an apparent transcription inconsistency, stating that he died in “York”; this conflicts with the casualty record, the Ploegsteert Memorial commemoration and the battalion’s known operations in France. The balance of evidence establishes that his death occurred on the Western Front, not in Yorkshire. [2][1]
Rees was approximately twenty-nine years old. His widow, Florence, was left with two young daughters, Florence Kate Elizabeth and Edith Emily Mary, and with the immediate financial and emotional consequences of his death. [1]
Family Support After Loss
The Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects authorised payment of £4 11s 9d to Florence Rees on 2 March 1915. A further War Gratuity of £5 was authorised in September 1919, a small but significant acknowledgement of the family’s loss. [1]
In June 1920, a widow’s pension decision awarded Florence a weekly pension of £1 6s 8d, with an allowance of 17s 6d for the two children, totalling £2 4s 2d per week. The pension record documents in practical terms the continued responsibility borne by Florence as a widow raising two dependent daughters. [1]
These figures cannot measure the personal cost of Alfred’s death, but they provide rare evidence of the administrative aftermath of war within one family: a lost wage-earner, a widow, two children and a formal system of state support. [1]
Commemoration
Alfred George Rees has no known grave. He is commemorated on Panel 47 of the Ploegsteert Memorial in Belgium, which bears the names of more than 11,000 servicemen of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the area and whose graves are unknown.
[1]The memorial stands at Ploegsteert, south of Ypres, and commemorates casualties who died between October 1914 and September 1917. Rees’s inclusion reflects the uncertainty and disruption of the opening battles around Armentières, where many men were killed and their burial places were lost or never recorded.
[1]His name on the memorial is therefore both a military record and a substitute grave: a permanent public acknowledgement that a man from the family home at 123 Cannon Street, Lincoln, died while serving his country.
[1]Legacy
Alfred George Rees’s short, traceable life crossed Britain and the wider world: from Birkenhead and Tranmere to Grimsby, Lincoln and Kent, and even to northern China before the war. Yet it was in Lincoln that he established the household remembered in the records, supporting his wife and daughters through skilled work in the iron industry.
[1]His military service places him among the experienced soldiers of the early British Expeditionary Force. The 1st East Yorkshire Regiment entered France in September 1914 and was soon drawn into the hard fighting at Armentières, where Rees was killed during the campaign’s first autumn.
[2][1]His legacy survives in the family’s pension and effects records, the names of Florence and Edith Rees, and Panel 47 of the Ploegsteert Memorial. Together, they preserve the memory of a working man and family provider whose death became part of the immense human cost of the First World War.
[1]Sources and Further Reading
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Private Alfred G. Rees.
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Ploegsteert Memorial.
- The Long, Long Trail: 6th Division in the First World War.
- The Western Front Association: The 1st East Yorkshire Regiment in 1914.
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Diary evidence for the 1st East Yorkshire Regiment, 20 October 1914.
- Find a Grave: Alfred George Rees.
- Ancestry: census, marriage, pension, soldiers’ effects and service records cited in the individual report.
Sources
[1] Individual-Report-for-Alfred-George-Rees.pdf https://ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/web/direct-files/attachments/141549598/abb76fb3-6dd6-4038-ae95-a419ddb17c48/Individual-Report-for-Alfred-George-Rees.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Checksum-Mode=ENABLED&X-Amz-Credential=ASIA2F3EMEYE44A274LE%2F20261020%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20261020T124611Z&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEH0aCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJIMEYCIQDiV8%2FK4iZt8Xh8ashBO1D92iN84I5UQazydU2QpkLvxgIhAPxmw6NGM%2BqxBFio%2FN8hiZ9qAu9n8PhIwdDAvmx3YyogKoAFCEQQARoMNjk5NzUzMzA5NzA1IgxiOxINfnjfgE6Ko4Uq3QQpJvnIwA%2F0oBgSraSyWz0Lt5k12Z16S%2Fu8LI7ASmAYtcd5GNMDxDEvPY%2BPSHD9x8JgpH4DEHj5bVlCiu1DLB%2FiGD0DwwZCQ1UOXD8j5PkpPAbJ7HxRT9j%2Bt0po1%2FKEMS2U2C2C55H2noT7nAMX5YJMvXXNoA7Q0WC1yNEfB%2BnVSRnNaJ9Kxg4remY7TAJKSfXOC%2BjBrOCL7vK3PzXyZ3T72wVxtT6SL9mGW%2FFyg58A7xr5CMO0UOqofJfPc%2BBPtYXyGQmfN9OFtjI0mH3P5tS%2FWRJcHzaEeqfYCbH75H0L1%2BI4nXrRh5FFoleraZVoFtfsGf7zGRJ6%2BaVeSOw691glaBnIpHO4FVOkKbr9ealLCviVS3Uo%2BNij6GAD%2F5Jpdv3SMHRBMvHV2WYN1f99mpcug%2F%2BYuGTUlxnEPyLMVYUqQjsofNRHkrg4rY976jbzNbB3Z6ts3M94a8sdjF0wehz70qXGtU13x%2B1V1OmsNcaIQa4YMrmuioILUjXgzGpnBLLiWlsDmnCJdZt4Ko3p2mCGDdP4VDA4qEgb43tHtCOqxtU6dbZKDimQRDiQaqv4WvCKoV0X0bmMrJUBdMcFGZ9r84hhHWnnoc2RAabLsVg0s9SerUIzeSS1qQV0qm%2BdkyIwwc%2BMDBJcw4L1DiSBIb%2Bqsaerm9uL%2BbtnFqvaLLAliYrrlp35qeBEPF4pykyxc0q9vqjw9OYPGFOQ7%2BG7m6ULBOHTufN4n%2B7N0mCE0wsZN6W9kc7FeTRNy3KnVLw32lgPMsc0SW85B90d4b9T9WB4vEW4JKIT9Kz5zoI2GjD9st3WBjqXAe%2FK%2FdfxpfQYfbMcBLqwqIG96V2bJSe%2FxceHuzg1nWK1pPBJYVFTB3rS0ak%2FYXMEDVspjQB2euUJy7%2FEn0ztWTiaKH%2F%2BD3Ru7aOsGNG%2F4q6ctav0pB90OAGV6rRV8I1yAUXJFeUx8O627naaectWmYa72c%2BPClsaccTZQqC927OARqVo%2B7EbKQzqG3tzZnD%2BM%2FijSR42sgs%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&x-id=GetObject&X-Amz-Signature=6c1c2b48c9026bd242f6c34ed647954361c4311ae6de2d02ded2c66066b82ec2
[2] The East Yorkshire Regiment’s Regular Officers of August 1914 and … https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/2023/march/a-bloody-war-or-a-sickly-season-the-east-yorkshire-regiment-s-regular-officers-of-august-1914-and-the-great-war/
[3] The East Yorkshire Regiment – 1918 https://www.ww1hull.com/the-east-yorkshire-regiment/
[4] 6th Division – The Long, Long Trail https://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/order-of-battle-of-divisions/6th-division/
[5] Private Douglas L. Wilkinson | First World War Story | For Evermore https://www.cwgc.org/stories/stories/private-douglas-leslie-wilkinson-10008-1st-bn-east-yorkshire-regiment-a-diary/
[6] Story: Killed in Action 13th October 1914 | Lives of the First World War https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/12732
[7] Lieutenant Peter Clutterbuck, 1st Bn. East Yorkshire Regiment https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/277291-lieutenant-peter-clutterbuck-1st-bn-east-yorkshire-regiment/
[8] Ploegsteert Memorial, Comines-Warneton, Belgium – Surnames H https://www.interment.net/data/bel/ploegsteert-memorial/records-h.htm
[9] Chapter 1 – Army – East Riding Archives https://www.eastridingarchives.co.uk/ww1-1/
[10] East Yorkshire Regiment – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Yorkshire_Regiment
[11] East Yorkshire Regiment – First World War Soldiers Photos https://ww1photos.com/firstworldwarsoldiers/index.php/category/east-yorkshire-regiment/
[12] 6 DIVISION 18 Infantry Brigade East Yorkshire Regiment 1st … https://www.naval-military-press.com/product/6-division-18-infantry-brigade-east-yorkshire-regiment-1st-battalion-prince-of-waless-own-west-yorkshire-regiment-1st-battalion-and-brigade-machine-gun-company-7-august-1914-31-january-1918/
[13] The Yorkshire Regiment, WW1 Remembrance http://www.ww1-yorkshires.org.uk/html-files/database-search-result.php
[14] 6th East Yorkshire Regiment – Soldiers and their units https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/291422-6th-east-yorkshire-regiment/
[15] 6th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment in the Great War https://www.wartimememoriesproject.com/greatwar/allied/battalion.php?pid=539
[16] East Yorkshire Regiment – First World War Casualties https://astreetnearyou.org/regiment/165/East-Yorkshire-Regiment
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