SIGNALLER ALFRED FORFAR
THE KING'S (LIVERPOOL REGIMENT)
22ND JUNE 1916 AGE 22
BURIED: AVESNES-LE-COMTE COMMUNAL CEMEMTERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
'My Alf' was Mrs Emily Forfar's eldest son, Alfred Forfar. There is something infinitely touching about informal inscriptions like this. Mrs Forfar has not chosen anything religious, heroic or conventional she has just used the tender endearment - my Alf.
Forfar was a territorial soldier before the war, serving with the 9th Battalion The King's Liverpool Regiment and working as a parcels' clerk at Liverpool Central Station.
He volunteered for foreign service in October 1914 and was posted overseas in March 1915. On 20 June 1916 he was in a forward area mending the telephone wires when he was wounded, according to his Captain, by a bomb. He died of 'gun-shot wounds' in his left side two days later.
William Wilson Forfar and his wife, Emily, had six children, of whom three, all of them daughters, died before they were seven: Grace born and died in 1907, Doris and Olive in 1909 aged seven and six respectively. William Wilson Forfar does not appear in the 1911 census, it would appear that at some point he went to Australia without his family and died there. In 1911 Emily Forfar was supporting herself working as a household helper in the West Derby Union Workhouse.
[Much of this information has come from the excellent research on Forfar done by the Merseyside Roll of Honour website.]