Private Mark Cockburn

Private Mark Cockburn, 1st/7th ( Territorial ) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He died in Belgium on 6th February 1916 of wounds caused by shellfire and is buried in Maple Copse Cemetery, Zillebeke, Flanders, Belgium. At that time the Battalion were holding frontline trenches in the Armagh Wood area of the Ypres Salient and suffered several casualties from enemy shelling. He was a native of Coldstream and had enlisted in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The photograph shows the impressive Memorial raised to the fallen of the 50th ( Northumbrian ) Division of which the Battalion was part of until February 1918 when it was transferred to the 42nd ( East Lancashire ) Division as the Pioneer Battalion. It was erected near the village of Weiltje in thew Ypres Salient where nearby on the 26th April 1915 the Division had fought its first action of the War only days after landing on the Continent.