Lives of the First World War

Ernest's death is described by Mervyn Roach a colleague from "B" Coy. "May 29th The Germans attempted to bomb us two or three times during the day with little success and then they sent shells over, unfortunately with some results. Several fellows including Woodthorpe and Softy were partially buried, ”Fearce” got a kosh on the head by a piece of shell, two of no 5 Platoon were rendered eligible for Angleterre and two poor chaps , Roberts & Pennington were blown to bits. About 5 o’clock, I & 3 other corporals had to go with Captain Gold to K5, the old German fort that caused so much trouble during the recent advance. We went back to our main line, and down a communication trench which was pretty gruesome: the 13th Canadian Regt. were occupying it, good looking boys all; when we got to K5 we found it looked as if about 6 earthquakes had occurred there; the ground was stained with lyddite and huge masses of earth & equipment were thrown up everywhere. The whole thing was indescribable; the Canadians had been constructing a new communication trench to join up with our trench at J5. When we got back to our main line we waited for our respective Platoon to come up from the advanced trench, where they had been relieved by A & D Companies. They arrived just before midnight and soon after that we all turned in."

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