Stanley Francis Coleman

A Private with the 1/4th Battalion, Stanley died on 18th of August 1916 at the age of 19.

Stanley was born at Lowestoft in 1896, a son of William Edward and Emily Jane Coleman. He was baptised at Saint Margaret’s Church on 17 January 1897 and his family lived at 15 Edinburgh Road. By 1901 his family was living at Alpha Villa, 6 Ipswich Road, and this was still their address in 1911 when Stanley was a shipwright’s apprentice.

Stanley volunteered and enlisted in the Army at Lowestoft in February 1913. He joined the Suffolk Regiment and served with the 1/4th Battalion. He was mobilized when the war began, and he arrived in France with the 1/4th Battalion on 8 November 1914. 

On 14 August 1916 the 1/4th Battalion moved into an area of trenches known as Seaforth, Black Watch and Worcester Trenches, near High Wood. At 2.45 p.m. on 18 August the battalion attacked the German trenches opposite their position as part of a brigade assault. D and C Companies reached the German line but had to retire as they had both flanks ‘in the air’ and no reinforcements were forthcoming. Two Lewis rifles (machine-guns) were positioned in the German trench and hostile bombing attacks repulsed. Finally, the men withdrew to Seaforth Trench. 

In the attack the battalion had three officers killed and three wounded, and 33 other ranks killed, 108 wounded, 17 missing presumed killed and 23 missing.  

Stanley was killed in action on 18 August. 

A note in the East Anglian Daily Times, 18 September 1916, page 8, gave details of Stanley’s death:

Private Stanley F. Coleman, son of Mrs. Coleman, of Ipswich Road, Lowestoft, has died at the front. He was one of the Machine-gun Section, and took charge of the gun after one of his mates had been wounded. He had been at the front 22 months. He was a member of Saint Margaret’s choir, Lowestoft, and a scholar of Church Road Council School.