Capt Arthur de Bells Adam (MC)
1885 - 1916

CPL David Wallace Crawford
1887 - 1916

Lce-Corpl John Joseph Nickle
1894 - 1916

Pte 17911 Morton Neill
1897 - 1916

Lieut Edward Stanley Ashcroft
1883 - 1918

L/Cpl 52250 Alfred Bethell

Age: 23
From: Manchester
Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
K.I.A Saturday 30th March 1918
Commemorated at: Pozieres Memorial
Panel Ref: P21-23

Alfred was born on 14th January 1895 in Manchester the son of Alfred Bethell and his wife Fanny Helena (nee Brereton).He had a twin brother Arthur. Alfred and Arthur were baptised in St. Anne’s, Newton Heath, on 17th February, the parents’ residence given as 11 Douro Street, and his father’s occupation listed as engine driver. His father, from Stockport, and his mother, born in Manchester, married in 1879 and had nine children, one of whom died in infancy (also called Alfred, 1885).

Alfred had older siblings Frances, William, Fred, and James, all born in Stockport, and Eleanor, born in Reddish. Alfred, Arthur, and Thomas were born in Newton Heath, Manchester.

In 1901 the family is living at 15 Ten Acres Lane, Newton Heath, with eight children. His father is a gas engine attendant, Frances is 21, a handkerchief machinist, William, 19, and Fred, 17, are cotton spinners, and James, 14, is an office errand boy. Eleanor is 11, Alfred and Arthur are 6, and Thomas is 4.

His brother William died in 1906, at the age of 24.

They are still at 15 Ten Acres Lane in 1911. His father is 50, a steam pipe fitter in a carriage works, his mother is 56. The four youngest children are at home and work in a cotton spinning mill: Eleanor, 21, is a machinist (handkerchiefs), Alfred and Arthur, 16, and Thomas, 15, are cotton piecers.

Alfred enlisted in Manchester and was formerly 4129, Manchester Regiment and was serving in the 19^th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Lance-Corporal No 52250 when he was killed in action on the 30^th March 1918 aged 23 during the German Spring Offensive. The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he served for 32 months, enlisting in about July 1915. Unfortunately, his service record has not survived.

Alfred was initially declared Missing between 22-30 March. CWGC shows his date of death between 22 March and 30 March 1918, place not known. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial in France.

The POZIERES MEMORIAL relates to the period of crisis in March and April 1918 when the Allied Fifth Army was driven back by overwhelming numbers across the former Somme battlefields, and the months that followed before the Advance to Victory, which began on 8 August 1918. The Memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom and 300 of the South African Forces who have no known grave and who died on the Somme from 21 March to 7 August 1918.

The cemetery and memorial were designed by W.H. Cowlishaw, with sculpture by Laurence A. Turner. The memorial was unveiled by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien on 4 August 1930.

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.

Nine months later, after the war was over, his family were still hoping for news. One of his brothers appealed for information in a notice in the Manchester Evening News on 6th December 1918:

“Lce-Corpl. A. Bethell (52250) 19th King’s Liverpools, Lewis Gun section, missing between March 22-28 at Cambrai. Brother: 8 Orchard Road, Altrincham.”

His father Alfred received his Army effects and a War Gratuity of £16.

His mother died in 1931, aged 76 and his father in June 1939, aged 78. In 1939 his twin brother Arthur, now 44 and single, is living at 5 Ten Acres Lane, next door to his married sister Eleanor, and is employed as a steel works labourer.

Sadly, Alfred has not been identified on any memorial.

The service papers of his twin Arthur have survivied and they show that Athur enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery on 21st June 1915 when he was 20 years and six months old, his height 5’ 6 and a quarter inches tall. He arrived in France on 6/11/1916 and on 27th October 1917 suffered multiple gunshot wounds, resulting in the amputation of his left leg at the thigh, his right thumb, and terminal joint (tip) of his right index finger. He was discharged in October 1918, receiving a Silver War Badge and a disability pension of £1-7s-6d for life. He was 23.

We currently have no further information on Alfred Bethell, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.

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