Pte 331120 George Ernest Holden

• Age: 20
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Saturday 30th March 1918
• Commemorated at: Savy Brit Cem
  Panel Ref: Roupy Rd. Mem.47

George Ernest Holden was born in Huyton, near Liverpool, on 21st November 1897, the eldest son of George Richard Holden and his wife Jane Lloyd (née Culverston).  His parents were both born in the Everton area of Liverpool, married in 1896 and had two sons and five daughters. Ernest had younger siblings Winifred, Edith, John, Dorothy, Margaret and Bessie. 
He was baptised in St. Mary’s Church, Walton on the Hill on 10th January 1898, his parents living in St. John’s Road, Huyton, and his father’s occupation listed as clerk.

The 1901 Census finds the family at 45 Marlborough Road, Tuebrook with three children and a domestic servant.  His father is a railway clerk, George E. is 3.

By 1911 they have moved to 82 Steers Street, Everton.  His father, 44, is a managing clerk for a lubricant manufacturer, his mother is 39. George Ernest, 13, Winifred 12, Edith, 11, and John, 9, are at school. Dorothy is 7, Margaret 4, and Bessie 1. 

He enlisted in Liverpool in the 1/9th Bn King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private 3516 under the name Ernest.  The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he enlisted in 1914.  He would have turned just 17 years old in November 1914. Ernest arrived in France with his battalion on 7th August 1915.  At some point he was transferred to the 19th Bn K.L.R. as Private 331120 and served in A Company, 4th Platoon. He was killed in action on the 30^th March 1918 aged 20 during the German Spring Offensive.

Ernest was declared Missing between 22nd-30th March 1918.

His father contacted the International Red Cross hoping that his son had been taken prisoner at St. Quentin, but learned in a reply on 14th June that they held no information on Ernest.

His death was later presumed for official purposes as having occurred on 30th March 1918.  He was 20 years old.

As Graham Maddocks points out in his book The Liverpool Pals, the CWGC records 38 men of the 19^th Bn of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as killed in action on 30^th March 1918 when as the Battalion diary below, shown in bold type, records that the men were actually out of the line and safely on the way to St Valery- sur- Somme.

The composite battalion moved off from ROUVREL at 8.30 am at 50 yards interval between companies, arriving at SALEUX at 3.20 pm where they entrained, detraining at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME the same night. The night was spent at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME.

Apart from those whose bodies were not found and are commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial all but two have burial sites at Savy British Cemetery, which itself is within a couple of miles of Roupy and contains most of the identified men killed on 22^nd March 1918. Therefore, it would appear that the date of death for these men shown as 30^th March 1918 is purely an arbitrary one and that they were in fact killed on 22^nd March. 

Ernest is commemorated in Savy British Cemetery, France, where a Special Kipling Memorial reads:

“To the Memory of these 68 British Soldiers who were killed in action in March 1918 and buried at the time in the German Cemetery on the St. Quentin - Roupy Road, whose graves are now lost.”.

The Inscription on Ernest's headstone reads:

“HE GAVE HIS ALL”

Savy was taken by the 32nd Division on the 1st April 1917, after hard fighting, and Savy Wood on the 2nd. On the 21st March 1918 Savy and Roupy were successfully defended by the 30th Division, but the line was withdrawn after nightfall. The village and the wood were retaken on the 17th September 1918 by the 34th French Division, fighting on the right of the British IX Corps.

Savy British Cemetery was made in 1919, and the graves from the battlefields and from the following small cemeteries in the neighbourhood were concentrated into it.

There are now over 850, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, more than half are unidentified. Memorials are erected in the cemetery to 68 soldiers (chiefly of the 19th King's Liverpools and the 17th Manchesters), buried by the Germans in their cemetery on the St. Quentin-Roupy road, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

The Cemetery covers an area of 2,555 square metres and is enclosed by a low rubble wall.

It is telling that his documents were not received in the pension office until 19th June 1919, suggesting that his family waited 15 months before they were officially notified that Ernest had been declared killed in action.

Ernest earned his three medals.  His Army effects and a War Gratuity of £18-10s went to his mother Jane.

In 1939 his parents are living at 54 Fulwood Road, Liverpool, with daughters Dorothy and Bessie. His father, 73, is a dock labourer, heavy works, his mother is 67. 

His parents lived through the Second World War;  his father died in 1950, aged 83, and his mother in 1959 at the age of 87.

George Ernest Holden is commemorated in the Hall of Remembrance, Liverpool Town Hall at Panel 58.

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