Edwin Brough Private 12229 - 9th Bn. North Stafford Regiment Killed in action in France on Friday 5th October 1917 aged 24 No known grave but is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Belgium Edwin Brough, the son of George and Ellen Brough was born in Gnosall in 1892. On the 1881 census George and Ellen were living at Audmore. The 1891 census indicates they were living in Audmore Road above the Knightley Road turnoff. Edwin is on the 1901 census aged 8 and the family had moved to Back Lane. By the 1911 census George and Ellen were living in Cross Street next door to their son William. Edwin was working as a waggoner on a farm near to Burton on Trent. He joined the North Staffordshire Regiment, 9 th  Bn. (private 12229) in Burton-on-Trent and first ‘joined the theatre of war’ in France on the 27 th  July 1915. In April 1915 the 9 th  Bn. had joined the 37 th  Division as a Pioneer Battalion, whose historical role was to aid other arms in heavy work such as the construction of field fortifications, military camps, roads and bridges. Pioneers were also often engaged in the construction and repair of military railways. The battalion landed at Le Havre in July 1915. By 1917 the battalion was at Broodseinde near Ypres in Flanders where a successful battle was fought on the 4 th  of October. However after a somewhat dry but unsettled period, rain began again in earnest on that day and the troops, guns and ammunition had had to move forward through an area devastated by shell fire and the heavy rain. They were pushing the Germans back but onto far less damaged ground. Edwin Brough did not live to take part in the next planned attack: on the 5 th  of October he was killed in action, aged 24. His   body   was   not   recovered   and   he   is   now   commemorated   on   the   Tyne   Cot   Memorial   in Zonnebeke,   Belgium.   He   was   awarded   the   British   War   and   Victory   medals   and   the   1915 Star. Younger brother of John Brough reported missing in 1918 .

Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Historical Information 'Tyne Cot' or 'Tyne Cottage' was the name given by the Northumberland Fusiliers to a barn which stood near the level crossing on the Passchendaele-Broodseinde road. The barn, which had become the centre of five or six German blockhouses, or pill-boxes, was captured by the 3rd Australian Division on 4 October 1917, in the advance on Passchendaele. One of these pill-boxes was unusually large and was used as an advanced dressing station after its capture. From 6 October to the end of March 1918, 343 graves were made, on two sides of it, by the 50th (Northumbrian) and 33rd Divisions, and by two Canadian units. The cemetery was in German hands again from 13 April to 28 September, when it was finally recaptured, with Passchendaele, by the Belgian Army. It was greatly enlarged after the Armistice when remains were brought in from the battlefields of Passchendaele and Langemarck, and from a few small burial grounds. It is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world in terms of burials. At the suggestion of King George V, who visited the cemetery in 1922, the Cross of Sacrifice was placed on the original large pill-box. There are three other pill-boxes in the cemetery.