GIRLING, Edward Fenn

Edward Girling was born in Sutton, Suffolk, moved to Stourbridge and attended Hill Street Council School. He was apprenticed to Alderman S. Fiddian and joined the Staffordshire Territorials in 1914. He went to the 1/5th Battalion who fought at Loos in the costly attack in October 1915 on the Hohenzollern Redoubt. They suffered further heavy losses on the first day of the Somme in 1916 when they attacked at Gommecourt in a diversionary attack on the 1st July. Private Edward Girling was seriously wounded and taken to a Casualty Clearing Station where he died on the 4th July. He was 22 years of age and is buried in Warlincourt Halte British Cemetery, Saulty (I F 4) and commemorated on the Lye and Wollescote, Lye church and Greenfields school Memorials. His brother, Charles, was killed in April 1918.