Alfred Paget Bacon

A Private with the 9th Battalion, Alfred died on 13th of September 1916 at the age of 21. 

Alfred was born at Walthamstow in 1895, a son of Jasper and Edith Mary Bacon. He was baptised at Saint Michael and All Angels Church, Walthamstow, on 18 September 1895. By 1901 Alfred’s father had died and his mother had married William Sarbutt and the family lived at 37 Tyrolean Square, Great Yarmouth. By 1911 they were living at 4 Fleggs Cottages, Moyse Road, Oulton, and Alfred was an assistant to a baker and confectioner. 

Alfred volunteered and enlisted in the Army at Lowestoft. He joined the Suffolk Regiment, service number 12654. He was posted to the 9th Battalion and arrived in France with the Battalion on 31 August 1915. 

Colonel Murphy’s ‘The History of the Suffolk Regiment 1914-1927’ has the following account of the 9th Battalion’s attack at The Quadrilateral 13 September 1916:

The battalion took part in an attack by the 61st Division on the Quadrilateral., the 71st Brigade being on the left and the 16th on the right. The 9th Battalion attacked with three companies in the front line and one in support, zero being 6.20 a.m. The battalion got through the German out post line quite easily, but on gaining the open ground, which stretched for about four hundred yards to the enemy’s wire, came under a terrific machine-gun fire from the formidable strong point known as the Quadrilateral. Across this bare expanse the men struggled bravely forward. Lieutenant Macdonald with others getting close enough to throw a bomb into the German stronghold before being wounded. No further progress could, however, be made. At 7.30 a.m. another attack, in which A Company participated, was launched; and in the evening a third. Still no entrance could be effected. The battalion therefore, in touch with the units on both flanks, dug itself in on a line about half a mile in front of the jumping off trenches of the morning.  

The Battalion’s casualties were: officers 2 killed and 10 wounded; other ranks 15 killed and 185 wounded. 

Alfred was reported missing and later it was concluded that he had died on, or since, 13-16 September.