Private Ambrose Townsley

Private Ambrose Townsley, 10th ( Service ) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in action in Belgium on 20th September, aged 20, during the Battle of Third Ypres and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Flanders, Belgium. He was married to Mrs Townsley of 31 Chapel Street, Berwick and was just 17 when he enlisted. In a letter home to his father the Chaplain wrote ” your son showed splendid courage and devotion that day “. His father Thomas Townsley lived in Leet Street, Coldstream and Ambrose was the third of his sons to fall. ( The Coldstream War Memorial gives his Regiment as the Kings Own Scottish Borderers ). The photographs try to depict the utter desolation of the Flanders battlefield where the incessant shelling had destroyed the fragile drainage systems