SKELTON - IN - CLEVELAND
IN HISTORY
"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"

Private WILLIAM BENNISON.

202876 2nd Bn, Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment)

who died, age 22, on the 15th April 1918.

Son of Thomas William and Sarah Jane Bennison, of 9 Park St, Skelton-in-Cleveland, N Yorks.


The Ploegsteert Memorial, Berks Cemetery Extension.
12k South of Ypres.
William Bennison.

At the census of 1901, William, aged 7, was living at 9 Park St and had been born in Skelton.
His father, who worked in the Ironstone mines as a Bank overman, came from Guisborough, N Yorks and his mother from Skelton.
He had three brothers at the time - George 12, Joseph 1 and Thomas 3 mths.

William's battalion were part of the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division.
The Ploegsteert Memorial stands in Berks Cemetery Extension, which is located 12.5 kilometres south of Ieper town centre.
The sounding of the Last Post takes place at the Ploegsteert Memorial on the first Friday of every month at 7 p.m.
The memorial commemorates more than 11,000 servicemen of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in this sector during the First World War and have no known grave.
The memorial serves the area from the line Caestre-Dranoutre-Warneton to the north, to Haverskerque-Estaires-Fournes to the south, including the towns of Hazebrouck, Merville, Bailleul and Armentieres, the Forest of Nieppe, and Ploegsteert Wood.
The original intention had been to erect the memorial in Lille.
Those commemorated by the memorial did not die in major offensives, such as those which took place around Ypres to the north, or Loos to the south.
Most were killed in the course of the day-to-day trench warfare which characterised this part of the line, or in small scale set engagements.

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