LANCE CORPORAL JACK BAILEY
MANCHESTER REGIMENT
25TH APRIL 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: KARASOULI MILITARY CEMETERY, POLYKASTRO, GREECE
This is a most unusual inscription, in fact, to a certain extant, I am surprised that it passed the War Graves Commission's censors. It's the word 'avenge' - to inflict harm on someone for the harm they have done to you - that I have trouble with. It's not the sort of sentiment the Commission liked to encourage ... but they permitted it.
By 1911, Jack Bailey's father, William, was a widower. He and his wife had had seven children: three sons and four daughters. All three sons were killed in the war: the eldest, Charles William Bailey, served with the 2nd Battalion the Manchester Regiment and was killed at Ypres in December 1914 - he is commemorated on the Menin Gate. The second brother, Alfred Laurence Bailey, serving with the 1st Battalion the Manchester Regiment, was killed on 12 March 1915 in an attack on the Bois de Biez at Neuve Chapelle. He is commemorated on the Le Touret Memorial. Both brothers must have been regular soldiers.
Jack Bailey joined the army on the 16 April 1915. Perhaps, as his inscription says, motivated by the death of his brothers. He served with the 13th Battalion the Manchester Regiment which was posted to the Macedonian front in October 1915 as part of the British Salonika Force. Whilst many of the deaths in Salonika were caused by malaria, Jack Bailey was killed on 25 April 1917 in an attack on a Bulgarian strongpoint at Pip Ridge, two miles south of Lake Dorian.
He is the only one of his brothers to have a grave and therefore an inscription. It was signed for by his father.