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

Private FRANK HARKER.

27360 4th Bn Yorkshire Regt and 14th Bn., Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

who died, aged about 35, on the 27th of September 1918.

son of Hannah and Robert Harker of 9 Bolckow St, N Skelton, N Yorkshire.


FIFTEEN RAVINE, BRITISH CEMETERY, VILLERS-PLOUICH, (19k east of Peronne.)

At the Census of 1901 Frank was 17, living at 9 Bolckow and working as an Ironstone miner.
His father Robert, aged 45 at the time, was also a miner and had come from Rosedale, N Yorks.
His mother came from Pickering.
He had three sisters, Lily 16, Rose 13 and Florence 5; and one brother Robert 11.

The 14th (Service) Battalion (1st Birmingham) were formed at Birmingham in September 1914.
The were attached to 95th Brigade of the 32nd Division.
Why Frank was transferred from the 4th Yorks to the 14th Warwicks is not known.
In September of 1918 the tide was turning against the Germans and the 32nd Division fought in the Battles of the Hindenberg line, a series of pushes that finally broke through the formidable lines of trenches, barbed wire and concrete emplacements.
Frank lost his life just before the start of the Battle of St Quentin Canal.