On this day in 1914, John Marshall (1891-1914) was killed in action at Givenchy in France in the Great War – just 14 days after arriving on the Western Front.
A private in the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, John was 22 when he died.
He is one of 26,000 officers and men listed in a Great War Roll of Honour compiled by the 9th Marquis of Ruvigny.
John was killed on the final day of the four-day Battle of Givenchy just before Christmas 1914.
He was involved in an attack on German forces which began in freezing rain in the early hours of December 19.
About 4,000 British and Allied troops were killed or wounded in the battle, with 800 British troops taken prisoner.
John enlisted in the Coldstream Guards in Exeter and went to France on December 8, 1914.
He is remembered on the Le Touret Memorial, near Bethune, which commemorates more than 13,000 British soldiers who were killed between October 1914 and September 1915 and had no known grave.
He is also remembered on the war memorial at Knowstone Parish Church.
Paul Roberts
NOTES
John was the son of John Marshall (1857-1928) and Jane Tarr (1861-1935). His brother, Thomas Marshall married Dulcie Camilla Roberts (1892-1977), a great-granddaughter of John Roberts (1829-1919), my great-great grandfather who had 30 grandsons serving in the Great War.
Born in 1891 in Knowstone, John lived with his parents at Rock Cottage in 1901. John worked as a carter at Overborough Farm, Knowstone in 1911.
Picture below
Knowstone War Memorial on which John is remembered.
