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

Private GEORGE R. PULFORD.

31318 8th Bn, East Yorkshire Regiment.

who died, age 21, on the 3rd of May 1917.

Son of Robert J and Jane A Pulford, of 23, Park St, Skelton-in-Cleveland, N Yorks.


The Arras Memorial.

At the Census of 1901 George, aged 4, was living at 12 Yeoman St, Skelton.
His mother came from Rawcliffe, Yorks, but George and the others in his family had all been born in Wenhaston, Suffolk.
His father had not doubt come North to find work in the Ironstone mines, where he worked as a Horsekeeper.
George had a sister Maggie, age 5 and a brother Robert age 2.


East Yorkshire Regt.

The 8th Battalion East Yorks was attached to the 62nd Brigade, which formed part of the 21st Division.
The Division fought in the Arras offensive in 1917.
This campaign was one of the most important in which the BEF was engaged, yet in comparison with the Somme of 1916 and Passchendaele of 1917, terribly neglected by historians.
The British Army launched a large-scale attack at Arras as part of a master plan by new French Commander in Chief Robert Nivelle.
Although initially successful, it soon bogged down and became a terribly costly affair.
The British attack was against the formidable Hindenburg Line, to which the enemy had recently made a strategic withdrawal.
The battle can be considered to be composed of a number of phases: the Battle of Vimy and the First Battle of the Scarpe (a river in the area) were the opening phases
The Second and Third Battle of the Scarpe and the final Battle of Bullecourt and other actions against the Hindenburg Line concluded the fighting.
George lost his life during the Third Battle of the Scarpe.

The Arras Memorial is in the Faubourg-d'Amiens Cemetery, which is in the Boulevard du General de Gaulle in the western part of the town of Arras. The cemetery is near the Citadel, approximately 2 kilometres due west of the railway station.
The Memorial commemorates almost 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918 and have no known grave.