SERJEANT GEORGE HARRY BRAMMAGE
LEICESTERSHIRE REGIMENT
28TH SEPTEMBER 1917 AGE 23
BURIED: DOCHY FARM NEW BRITISH CEMETERY, YPRES, BELGIUM
Serjeant Brammage's inscription comes from the third verse of Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem, In Memory of John and Robert Ware. Chosen by his mother, it describes a gentle young man.
A whiter soul, a fairer mind,
A life with purer course and aim,
A gentler eye, a voice more kind,
We may not look on earth to find.
The love that lingers o'er his name
Is more than fame.
Brammage must have been not only a gentle young man but a capable one too. At the age of seventeen he was a shoe clicker, the person who cut the uppers from a piece of leather, one of the most skilled and best paid jobs in the shoe industry. It's therefore not surprising to find that within the British army he had achieved the rank of serjeant at 23.
He served with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicestershire Regiment, a Territorial battalion, that spent 1914 and '15 on home service. Warned for France in March 1916, the plans were altered at the last minute following the Easter Rising in Ireland. Sent to Ireland to help quell the rebellion, the battalion spent the next eight months there.
In January 1917 it was sent to France. After a few months on the Somme it moved to Ypres. Brammage was killed in the trenches near Polygon Wood on 24 September. The battalion war diary recorded:
Hill 37. Shelling not quite so heavy as previous days. Periods of comparative quiet. Back areas bombarded with H.H. explosives & gas shells at night.
There is no information about what exactly happened to Brammage but his body was not recovered and buried until October 1919.