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6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment had their HQ at St Michael's Hill, Bristol and were a unit of the Territorial Force serving with the Gloucester and Worcester Infantry Brigade, South Midland Division. A to H companies were all based in Bristol and they had two Cadet Companies, also based in Bristol. They were part of the Gloucester and Worcester Brigade, South Midland Division and had just departed for their annual summer camp when war broke out in August 1914 and they were at once recalled. They mobilised for war service on 5 August 1914 and moved to Swindon, then to Little Baddow in Essex in the second week of August to concentrate with the Division and commence training. They proceeded to France from Folkestone, landing at Boulogne on the 30th of March 1915. The Division concentrated near Cassel. On the 15th of May 1915 the formation was renamed 144th Brigade, 48th (South Midland) Division and were in trenches in Le Gheer, near Ploegsteert,Belgium. In 1916 they were in action in the Battle of the Somme, suffering hevy casualties on the 1st of July in assaulting the Quadrilateral (Heidenkopf). They were also in action at The Battle of Bazentin Ridge, capturing Ovillers, The Battle of Pozieres Ridge, The Battle of the Ancre Heights and The Battle of the Ancre. In 1917 the Division occupied Peronne during the The German Retreat to the Hindenburg Line and were in action in the Third Battles of Ypres. On the 21st of November 1917 they entrained for Italy. In 1918 they were involved in The fighting on the Asiago Plateau and The Battle of the Vittoria Veneto in the Val d'Assa area. At the Armistice the Division had withdrawn and was at Granezza. Demobilisation began in early 1919.
7th Sep 1914 Training
8th Sep 1914 Inspection
14th Sep 1914 Course
29th Mar 1915 Transport
30th Mar 1915 On the Move
1st Apr 1915 On the Move
5th Apr 1915 On the Move
10th Apr 1915 Instruction
17th Apr 1915 In Reserve
21st Apr 1915 Reliefs
26th Apr 1915 Reliefs
30th Apr 1915 Relief 
5th May 1915 In Reserve
11th May 1915 Relief Complete
13th May 1915 Under Fire
16th May 1915 In Reserve
19th May 1915 Reliefs
23rd May 1915 In Reserve
27th May 1915 Relief
31st May 1915 Good Weather
1st Jun 1915 In Reserve
4th Jun 1915 Reliefs
9th Jun 1915 In Reserve
10th Jun 1915 Reliefs
15th Jun 1915 Reliefs
16th Jun 1915 In Reserve
19th Jun 1915 On the Move
23rd Jun 1915 Reliefs
25th Jun 1915 Reliefs
26th Jun 1915 Reliefs
27th Jun 1915 On the March
28th Jun 1915 On the March
29th Jun 1915 On the March
30th Jun 1915 Wet Weather
8th Jul 1915 Kitchener's Visit
13th Jul 1915 Gloucesters & Worcesters on the march
15th Jul 1915 Trench digging by night
17th Jul 1915 Orders to move received by 8th Worcesters
27 Jul 1915 Front Line Inspected
27 Jul 1915 Front Line Inspected
15th Aug 1915 Working Parties
29th Aug 1915 Working Parties
5th Sep 1915 In the Trenches
11th Sep 1915 Air Raid
16th Oct 1915 The Derby Scheme
4th Nov 1915 In the Trenches
22nd Nov 1915 Lethal Weapon
25th Nov 1915 Raid Carried Out
1st Dec 1915 Derby Scheme Armlets
11th Sep 1915 Last day of Derby Scheme Recruitment
10th Jan 1916 Group System Reopens
9th February 1916 Call Ups
12th Feb 1916 Football Tournament
13th February 1916 Relieved in the trenches by 1 / 6th Gloucester Regt.
4th Jul 1916 Reliefs
19th Jul 1916 Gas
19th Jul 1916 In Action
25th Jul 1916 Officers Transferred
1st November 1916 Operational Orders
If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.
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| Want to know more about 6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment? There are:5289 items tagged 6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.
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Those known to have served with6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment during the Great War 1914-1918. - Beaver Albert Richmond. L/Cpl. (d.27th May 1917)
- Blackmore Arthur James Cyril. Pte. (d.29th May 1915)
- Clark Herbert Stanley. Cpl. (d.3rd Sep 1916)
- Cross Fred C.. Pte.
- Dolman Stephen. Pte. (d.19th Mar 1916)
- Gay Benjamin Charles. Cpl. (d.25th Apr 1915)
- Ingram Henry. Pte. (d.22nd Aug 1916)
- Loney William. Cpl. (d.6th July 1917)
- Molteno Leonard Clarke. L/Cpl. (d.23rd Jul 1916)
- Mortimer George Henry. Pte. (d.29th Mar 1917)
- Styles Joseph. Pte. (d.11th April 1918)
- Taverner William John. L/Cpl. (d.4th Oct 1918)
- Woodworth William. Pte.
All names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed,
please Add a Name to this List
Records of 6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment from other sources.
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Pte. Fred C. Cross 9th Btn. Gloucestershire Regiment Fred Cross, my Grandad, was born in Bristol in 1896. His older brother, Henry Wyndham Cross, had joined the Glosters in 1911. Fred joined the Territorial Force in the 1/6th Glosters in May 1914 when he was just 18. However, by October that year he was dismissed as being medically unfit for further service.
He rejoined the 9th Battalion of the Glosters in 1915 and then was on Active Service from early 1916 until at least March 1918.
It was in March 1918, whilst with the 9th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, that he was assigned to a sick convoy on the 2nd of March 1918 due to inflammation of connective tissue, buttocks.
I have 3 photos of him in uniform and a couple of letters/postcards that were sent to him.
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Pte. George Henry Mortimer 6th Btn. Gloucestershire Regiment (d.29th Mar 1917) George Mortimer was born in 1893 at Oldland Common, Bristol. one of 6 children. He was killed in action on 29th of March 1917 in Flanders.
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L/Cpl. William John Taverner 1/6th Btn. Gloucestershire Regiment (d.4th Oct 1918) Lance Corporal William Taverner was the Son of George and Ellen Taverner, of 34, Birch Rd., Southville, Bristol.
He was 23 when he died and is buried in the Sirmione Communal Cemetery in Italy.
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Pte. Joseph Styles 1/6th Btn. Gloucestershire Regiment (d.11th April 1918) Private Styles was the Son of James and Mary Styles, of Evesham, St. Peter Bengeworth; husband of Eliza Ann Styles, of 29, Port St., Bengeworth, Evesham, Worcs.
He was 42 when he died and is buried in the Montecchio Maggiore Communal Cemetery in Italy.
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L/Cpl. Albert Richmond Beaver 8th Btn. Loyal North Lancashire (d.27th May 1917) R. Beaver is commemorated on the Mangotsfield War Memorial but there is no man of that name from Mangotsfield recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. But, there is an Albert Richmond Beaver from the village so it appears he was probably better known as Richmond Baber as indicated on the Electoral list of 1914?
Hewas born in 1890 in Mangotsfield to Albert and Amy Keziah Beaver (nee Baker) who were married on 25th December 1888 in Christ Church, Downend. In 1891 they were living in Staple Hill and ten years later Richmond was residing in Salisbury Avenue, Two Mile Hill, St. George with his step father William Gingell who had married Richmond's mother Amy in 1895 following the death of Richmond's father Albert in 1892. When he enlisted in 1909 Richmond was employed as a box making machinist in a printing works living at 11, Burchell's Green Road, St. George with his step father who had also been widowed, with Richmond's mother Amy passing away in 1910.
Richmond enlisted for ten years on 3rd June 1909 in Bristol as Ordinary Seaman Bristol 3/788 in the Royal Naval Division with his records showing he was 5' 6" tall with dark brown hair with grey eyes and had a small tattoo smudge on his right forearm. However his service appears to have been cut short or 'Incomplete' according to his service record. Despite having reached the level of A.B. (Able Bodied Seaman) it also states that his service onboard H.M.S. Spartan (a Second Class Light Cruiser) was cancelled and demoted to ships cook. Clearly he left the Royal Navy as the 1914 Electoral Register has Richmond living in 9, Court Road, Kingswood, with his wife Elizabeth.
He formerly served as Lance Corporal 27193 1st/6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment (based upon his service number), enlisting some time after 1915 and later posted as Lance Corporal 34329 to 8th (Service) Battalion, The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment (25th Division) for Kitchener's Army which had landed in Boulogne on 16th September 1915, the division concentrating in the area of Nieppe and on 26th October it was transferred to 7th Brigade. Their first action was in defence of the German attack on Vimy Ridge in May 1916. They then moved to The Somme and joined the Battle just after the main attack, with 75th Brigade making a costly attack near Thiepval on the 3rd of July. The Division was in action at The Battle of Bazentin, The Battle of Pozieres and The Battle of the Ancre Heights
Richmond was killed in action on 27th May 1917 near Neuve Eglise in the Battle of Messines during the attack between the Wulverghem-Messines and Wulverghem-Wytschaete roads and is buried at the Dranoutre Military Cemetery, 11.5 kilometres south of Ypres, Belgium. Strangely there is nothing untoward in the Battalion's War Diary to indicate there was any figthing with the enemy ..24th - 28th May. The 7th Infantry Brigade relieved the 74th Infantry Brigade in the Wulvergheim sector. The 1st Battalion Wiltshire Regiment going into the trenches. 8th Loyal North Lancs in brigade support at Neuve Eglise and the two remaining battalions in reserve at Aldershot and Bulford camps. However the Diary states that during the night of the 28th ...the enemy bombarded our front trenches, the damage done being inconsiderable (negligible).... so how was Richmond killed? He was posthumously awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War and Victory medals
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Pte. Arthur James Cyril Blackmore 6th Btn., 7th Pltn., B Coy. Gloucestershire Regiment (d.29th May 1915)  Arthur James Cyril Blackmore was born at 3, Northcote Road, St. George, Bristol on Saturday 10th. November 1894, the fourth son and the sixth of eleven children born to Frederick Charles and Augusta Susan Wesley Blackmore (nee Smith) and fourth youngest brother of Frank Wesley Blackmore. The 1911 Census shows the family had moved to 125, Beaufort Road St. George with Arthur being employed as a machine hand in a local chocolate factory (probably Packers like his brother Frank). He was well known in the east Bristol area being a member of the Redfield Wednesday Bowling Club and the St. Matthews (Moorfields) Bible Class and a keen player in its football team.
Arthur volunteered for service on Sunday 1st November 1914 (3 months after the outbreak of the War) at the Bristol Colston Hall having met the same physical criteria as those in the Regular Army.
Family myth has it that Arthurs platoon was digging trenches at Le Gheer, nr. Ploegsteert, Belgium on 29th May, and he allegedly struck a large stone with his entrenching tool thus alerting the attention of a German sniper who then shot him dead. Conversely a newspaper cutting stated that Arthur had sent a letter to his father Frederick Blackmore on the 30th May 1915 (a day after his reported death) saying that he was 'all right and was going into the trenches that night'. The same evening the paper reported he met his death under shell fire. This contradicts both the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's records that he was killed on Saturday 29th. May and not 30th. May, and also the Blackmore myth about him being killed by a sniper's bullet. However, the majority of battalion war diaries used figures compiled a day or two after the action, frequently by a junior officer who was more concerned with ascertaining how many men were fit for duty and were not subsequently corrected for the (often large number of) men who had been killed.
However, the more accurate version of Arthurs death was as a result of the Germans blowing a mine in front of the Gloucesters lines at 8.15 p.m. on the night of the 29th May 1915 followed by an artillery bombardment by the enemy. The resulting crater extended from the edge of their wire into No Man's Land. Mines in those days were a novelty and this occurrence drew crowds of red-hatted spectators to view the crater. Following the mining attack, strenuous efforts were made by both sides to gain possession of the crater, which could be put to effective use as a new forward listening post. The enemy was found to be adept in gaining an advantage from their mining activities and it was thought that they might do so again so at dusk two parties from the Glosters, each under a subaltern, were ordered to seize and consolidate the crater.
The two parties of Glosters, stood behind the trench's breastworks waiting for cloud cover to obscure the moon before tentatively working their way through the barbed wire and into the darkness beyond, armed with Mills Bombs that they had just been supplied with for the first time and rifles with bayonets fixed. Arthur's party was half way across No-Man's Land when a German machine gun opened up causing a few casualties as they set out to reinforce their side of the crater but were driven off by the combined Gloster consolidating parties who carried out their task successfully, throwing bombs (grenades) at the enemy as they retreated. Arthur's skirmishing party was led by 7 Platoon Commander, 2nd Lieutenant Wilfrid Henry Young, age 26, who was seriously wounded during the action and died the next day; he was the first officer of the Battalion to be killed in the war.
During the attack on the advancing German's, Arthur was shot and died seconds later, suffering very little. Also killed in the fighting were 2433 Private Percy Baker, age 26 - also of B Company and 2601 Private Henry Pope, age 19. All four were temporarily buried in a recently consecrated field next to the medical dressing station that had previously been the East Lancashire Regiment's HQ. This was sited just off the Ploegsteeert Road that troops used to move between their billets in the hamlet of Le Gheer and the front line and well established beyond the furthest range of the German artillery. Two days later the 4th and 6th Glosters greatly improved the bomb crater and named it 'Bristol Trench' after their home city. This sort of construction work was mostly done at night and in the open with the parties hoping that they would not be detected and exposed to machine gun fire from the German's 'Birdcage'.
Arthurs body would have been recovered by a burial detail and his corpse searched, and ID tag and papers taken for means of identification to enable them to report his name and location to a senior officer before his burial. Personal affects found on his body comprised a small quantity of money amounting to £3.9s.10d which was subsequently forwarded to his parents on 2nd October 1915. His temporary grave was given a rough wooden battlefield cross, with his name, army number and unit painted on it although this erroneously had an initial 'E' instead of an 'A' painted on it. After the Armistice, the 'Directorate of Graves Registration & Enquiries', a military organisation, had the responsibility to complete the work of securing the sites of battlefield cemeteries or isolated graves and recording their locations.
At the War's end Arthur's body was exhumed from its temporary grave and transferred to the newly constructed Lancashire Cottage Cemetery which is located 8 miles south of Ieper (Ypres). The name of this area and of the nearby wood, is actually Ploegsteert, but to those Tommies who served there during the Great War it jokingly became better known as Plugstreet. Despite the Ploegsteert sector being somewhat quieter than some others, with no famous set-piece battles, a summary of the battalions losses for May was written up in their War Diary on 1st June, viz, "During May the weather, with the exception of one wet week, has been good. Strength of Battalion is 3 Officers and 118 other ranks below establishment. Casualties - Officers 1 Killed and 1 Wounded. Other ranks 14 Killed and 45 Wounded."
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Pte. William "Woody" Woodworth 6th Btn. Gloucestershire Regiment  Uncle William “Woody†Woodworth the son of William and Elizabeth was baptised at St Peters and Paul’s church, Shepton Mallet 7 days before the Christmas of 1896. At the age of 4, Woody and his family moved to Bristol and settled in No 16 Stacey Street, Southville. The 1911 census reports Woody’s trade as an errand boy.
With the threat of the First World War, Woody would follow in the military footsteps of his brothers Arthur and Alfred and enlist to fight for King and Country. He joined the 6th battalion of the Gloucestershire regiment in 1915, his number being TF4875. This was a pre-war territorial battalion that was recruiting mainly from the Bristol area and the south. This battalion split at the start of the war and Woody spent many months training before finally arriving in France with the 2/6th in the early summer of 1916.
Woody sent and received many post cards during his active service and seemed to be very popular with the ladies! In France his unit suffered many casualties at the attack on Fromelles. The battalion diary recorded “men were practically blown back as they went over the parapet by machine guns and shrapnelâ€. Woody was wounded in August 1916 at Laventie and was sent back to England to recuperate.
In early 1917, Woody re-joined a reserve battalion (266691) at Catterick, which took in recovering wounded soldiers before they were sent out to the front again.
An old post card sent at Christmas 1917, shows Woody back in France fighting with the Glorious Glosters.
In the spring of 1918, his battalion was in position around Fresnoy in preparation for the German offensive. It was during that offensive that he would be injured for a second time, this time much more severely that would lead to him losing his left leg.
Cossham hospital in Bristol became his home from March 1918 for 4 months, later transferring to the Royal Pavilion military hospital in Brighton before arriving back in Bristol in 1919. Woody was presented with the silver war badge given to injured servicemen.
The loss of his left leg had a major impact on his life and in 1924 the Bristol Bench imposed a £5 fine or a month’s imprisonment on Woody, after he was charged with improper conduct on several different occasions in the presence of young women.
Woody died in Weston Super Mare aged 67 in 1964.
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Cpl. Benjamin Charles Gay 1/6th Btn. Gloucester Regiment (d.25th Apr 1915) Benjamin Charles Gay died from wounds on The Western Front. He was my great grandfather. We believe Benjamin's brother John Frederick known as Fred, was also in the Gloucester Regiment as a Machine Gun corp and died in France in 1918
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L/Cpl. Leonard Clarke Molteno 1/6th Btn. Gloucestershire Regiment (d.23rd Jul 1916) Leonard Molteno was my grandmother's favourite young brother, who was at Bristol University before the war, and lived in St Peter Port, Guernsey.
He died in action on the 23rd of July, 1916.
He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial.
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Pte. Stephen Dolman 1/6th Batallion Gloucestershire Regiment (d.19th Mar 1916) Born 1897 St Agnes, Bristol Stephen Dolman was the son of William and Mary Christina (nee Allen) and worked in the printing department at St Anns Board Mills. He is buried at Sucrerie Military Cemetery, Colincamps.
I believe that Stephens's elder brother William also served with the Gloucestershire Regiment and was Killed in Action but paucity of records I cannot definitively prove this.
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Cpl. Herbert Stanley Clark 1/6th Batallion Gloucestershire Regiment (d.3rd Sep 1916) Born 1891 in Bedminster, Bristol, Herbert Clark was the son of Henry Alfred and Sarah Ann Clark (nee Chivers). His Pre-war occupation was machinist. Herbert is buried in Auchonvilliers Military Cemetery.
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