A RETIRED teacher from Belgium is seeking out the family of a Skipton soldier who fought in the First World War and whose body rests in a cemetery in Boezinge, near Ypres

Lance Corporal Fred Gallagher, 2413, was a soldier in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment who died on December 19, 1915.

His story has been researched by Aurel Sercu who has accumulated dozens of photographs and created a 47-page document on the soldier who Mr Sercu said took his own life soon after Germany released gas on the area.

Mr Sercu said he was drawn to the name of Fred Gallagher after browsing through the WW1 War Diaries of a battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, which in 1915 was active just east of a local Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in his village of Boezinge.

“For weeks I tried to learn more about this man. I read his Army records, including the witness statements. Since then I can hardly pass the place where the war ended for Lance Corporal Fred Gallagher. I visit his grave at least once a week,” he said.

“At the end of 2018 I finished my research, which resulted in a long article. And then I decided to try to find possible relatives of Fred Gallagher. In the Skipton area to start with, with no luck.

Fred Gallagher was born in December 1891 in Skipton. His parents were David Gallagher who died in 1899 and Elizabeth Ann Gallagher, nee Pickard, who died in 1933.

Fred had three sisters: Grace, Lily who married a Percy Smith in 1911, and Daisy, who married a man canned Chapman. He also had a Brother, Edgar. Fred Gallagher was not married.

“In April 1915 he and the 1/6th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regiment arrived in France. In July 1915 he was between Ypres and Boezinge, an area often described as a ‘sea of mud’.

“Due to sickness however Fred Gallagher left the front lines after a couple of days, and for over four months he was near Poperinge (Belgium), St.-Omer and Etaples (France). And then he was sent back to Boezinge and to the front lines of the battlefield.”

When Fred died he was buried in Talana Farm Cemetery.

Three weeks later (January 14, 1916) his mother Elizabeth had a few lines published in The Craven Herald which read: ‘He bravely answered duty’s call, His life he gave for one and all, But the unknown grave is the bitterest blow, None but an aching heart can know’.”

Mr Sercu said an acquaintance of his placed the cross and poppy on Fred’s grave as well as on the graves of other Duke of Wellington Regiment soldiers in the cemetery around the time of the centenary.

He said that his research was aided in the fact that Fred Gallagher’s army records still exist, as they survived the Blitz in WWII. He was also helped by the The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment - Regimental Archives, in Halifax, and of the website: Craven’s Part in the Great War.

“This is not the first time in the last 20 years that I try to find UK relatives of a soldier I did research on.

“Maybe my wife is right when she says this is not a passion, it is an obsession.”

“For hours and days and weeks I myself focus on Soldier X, or Y or Z. In my village there is no one else ‘who cares’ about that man. But even thinking that will never stop me of course.”

He added that he used to be a member of a team of amateur-archaeologists active in his village and found insignia badges which had been lost on the battlefield by Fred’s Duke of Wellington Regiment comrades. A lot of lost spoon and fork handles inscribed with soldiers’ initials and numbers were also unearthed.

Mr Sercu said his sole purpose now is to locate relatives of Fred Gallagher and pass on the documents he has put together with photographs and illustrations.

Any member of Fred’s family who wishes to have the information Mr Sercu has put together can write to him at: Bloemendale 11, 8904 Boezinge-Ieper, Belgium or email: aurel.sercu@telenet.be