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Pte. Herbert Ingoe
British Army 18th Battalion Manchester Regiment
from:Manchester
(d.1st July 1916)
Herbert Ingoe was a Manchester clerk, born in 1892. Joined up on 04/09/14. He is described as having Dark hair, sallow complexion, hazel/grey eyes. 5 foot 3-and-a-half; Chest 31-and-a-half inches when fully expanded (with 2 inches expansion). Weight, 106lbs. Eyesight, D6.
As 180411, Private Ingoe, Herbert, in the 18th City Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, he seems to have stood up well to basic training. By the end of 1915, his unit would have been in France. They celebrated Christmas there. His time was divided between travel, general duties and some spells in the front line. During his service, he committed one breach of King's Regulations: reported by Corporal Beattie for losing an oil-cloth 'by neglect' - and was required to pay for a new one. The case was heard on Nov the 21st, 1915.
Preparations were in hand for the Battle of The Somme. He was killed on July the 1st 1916, during the attack on Montaubon. He was in C Company, but we do not know precisely what part he tried to play in events at Montaubon. We have heard one story, possibly apocryphal, that he was badly wounded and left in a shell-crater by comrades, and that when they returned for him, he was nowhere to be found and the crater had doubled in size.
His last effects were returned to his father, George William Ingoe, in two parcels: The First contained One note book and one hair-ribbon. The Second contained Two notebooks, a diary, a French/English dictionary, a New Testament, two letters, one postcard, three visiting-cards and two newspaper-cuttings. We wonder if the two letters were addressed to his family and sweetheart, Alice (surname unknown), rather than from home, or if the postcard was of the kind for use in the field, a form to let relatives know how things were with him at the front.
He is commemorated at on the public memorial at Boggart Hole Clough, on a Weslyan Sunday Schools Roll of Honour at Blackley and at Thiepval, on the Commonwealth monument for personnel whose bodies were lost without trace. Herbert was a Wesleyan Methodist, teetotal.
His brother Alfred (1896- 1939), joined the RAMC as a stretcher-bearer in March, 1915; served out the war in the Dardanelles and on the Western Front, and was demobilized in 1919.
