In Sale with …. the war memorial ….. a place in Yorkshire and the Battle of El Alamein

I have long since stopped being surprised at just where a story can take you.

This one began with a request from Chris in Yorkshire who was trying to track the identity of a young man who died during the last world war.

The only clue was the name of the young man’s father and a suggestion that there was a connection with Whalley House in Whalley Range.

By one of those convoluted twists, he had got hold of my name, and together we set off to uncover what we could.

At this stage Chris had no idea which of the three services the young man had served in, or the theatre of war, only that his death might have been in 1943.

The father’s name was Samuel Holmes who had left Bradford to set up a business in Manchester, sometime around 1925.

And after a few disappointing false trails I found him living on Washway Road in Sale, with his wife, and son in 1939.  He described himself as a Cotton Piece Goods Merchant and Shipper, which fitted with what Chris already knew.

But the real find of course was the name of Mr. Holmes’s son, who was Cyril, born in 1919, and armed with his identity it was possible to trawl the war records, which offered four possible candidates.

As so often happens, each seemed promising but also contained details which appeared to rule them out.

In one case there was no match with Samuel and his wife Elsie, and in another two, the date of death was wrong, leaving the last which placed him at El Alamein in 1942.  This was a year earlier and uncomfortably offered Manchester not Yorkshire as the place of birth.

But this last one remained a possibility if only because this Cyril Holmes had joined the East Yorkshire Regiment which given the family links with the county made it the best of the four.

And it was at this point that Chris following up the leads with Sale researched the Sale War Memorial which he writes confirmed that “There  is a Cyril H Holmes, who died  on June 15th, 1942 in Egypt.  And that on the Commonwealth Grave commission  website, they have Cyril Hardy Holmes, born in 1919 son of Sam and Elsie Holmes of Sale Cheshire, who  died on June 15th in 1942 at El Alamein, Ser.no.3656103,  of Duke of Yorks. East Yorkshire  Regiment.

I have checked my Lodge minute books and his death was noted in September 1943 after the summer break. With his Father being a Country member, it might be that the news took so long to be known”.

There will be more to find out, but for now that is it, other than to reflect that together Chris and I have added something more to the simple record on the war memorial in Sale.

Location, Yorkshire, Sale, Egypt

Picture; Sale War Memorial, 1925, TP 10912& November 12th, 2014, TP 10779, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies Centre, https://www.trafford.gov.uk/residents/leisure-and-lifestyle/libraries/Local-Studies/Trafford-Local-Studies.aspx