Ernest Hall

Ernest Hall Ernest was born in Worksop in 1887 and spent his early years living with his mother and brother at 15 Norfolk Street. By the start of the war he had become a colliery blacksmith’s striker and enlisted into the East Yorkshire Regiment in Sheffield but by 1917 he was serving in the 20th (Tyneside Scottish) Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers, probably because he had been wounded and changed units on his return to active service. In the Spring of 1917 at the insistence of the new Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, the British Army was prevented from launching a Spring offensive on its own account but was put under the control of the new French Commander, Robert Neville, who claimed to have a plan to end the war. The British attacked, initially very successfully at Arras in April 1917 – it was in this attack that the Canadians captured Vimy Ridge. The Tyneside Scottish Brigade, in which Private Hall was serving, reached its fourth objective before having to dig in but the 20th Battalion lost 187 men on 9th April, one of whom was Ernest Hall, killed in action. His body was recovered and is buried in Roclincourt Valley Cemetery. Courtesy of Robert Illett

CWG additional information:- Son of George A. and Anna Eliza Hall, of 9, Beechwood Rd., Hillsborough, Sheffield.