Lance Corporal John Gibson

Lance Corporal John Robert Gibson, 1st/7th ( Territorial ) Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment ( Prince of Wales’s Own ). He was killed in action in Belgium on the 9th October 1917 during the Battle of Third Ypres. He was the eldest son of John and Mrs Gibson of Fenwick Steads and the husband of Mrs Gibson of Fenwick. He had been employed as a woodman on the Haggerston Estate before enlisting in the Northumberland Fusiliers in March 1915. After training he was sent to France where he was transferred to the West Yorks. He had already been wounded in action and as well as a widow he left a young son. He is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Flanders, Belgium. The photos show the atrocious state of the battlefield where the incessant shelling had destroyed the fragile Flanders drainage systems.