Sergeant Henry Burgon

Sergeant Henry Burgon, 1st/7th ( Territorial ) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in Belgium on 31st December 1917, aged 30, and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Flanders, Belgium. He was the son of Henry and Ann Burgon of 67 Low Greens, Berwick and the husband of the late Grace Temple Burgon. At that time the Battalion were holding frontline trenches at Passchendaele from 28th-31st December in dreadful conditions ( see photographs below )and suffered 11 Other Ranks killed and 1 Officer and 24 Other Ranks wounded mostly by shellfire. Before enlisting in the local Territorials on the outbreak of War he had been employed as a plumber with Mr George Macadam of Berwick.  The photograph shows the impressive Memorial raised to the 50th ( Northumbrian ) Division of which the Battalion was part until February 1918. It was erected near the village of Weiltje in the Ypres Salient near to where the Division had fought its first action of the War on 26th April 1915.