Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

19 October - 22 November 1914. Following the failure of the German Schlieffen Plan in August and September 1914, both sides engaged in a series of linked battles as they sought to outflank each other. The climax of these manouvres was at Ypres in November 1914 when the might of the German Army attempted to break the much outnumbered British Expeditionary Force. The political importance of Ypres, being the last town of any size in Belgium that remained in allied hands, established its importance for both sides and ensured a series of battles over four years.

The First Battle of Ypres in 1914 is characterised by a series of linked heroic stands by outnumbered British soldiers in conditions of confusion and weary endurance. The Germans never knew how close they had come to winning - at one point just the clerks and cooks were the last line of defence for the BEF. By the end of the battle the magnificent original BEF, composed of professional regular soldiers, had been all but destroyed and already the Territorial battalions were called into battle. From the end of 1914 a 'Regular' battalion was in terms of its compostion little different to a Teritorial or later Service Battalion. The professional soldiers had all but vanished.

Detail :

FLETCHER, REGINALD WILLIAM, 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery, 1st.son of Charles Robert Leslie Fletcher, of Norham End, Oxford. Born Oxford 19th March. 1892. Educated at Eton, and Balliol College, Oxford, and was gazetted, with a University Commission, to the 8th Brigade RFA on the day war was declared. He went to France 20th August 1914 and was killed in action at Veldhoek. Belgium on 31st October 1914 while serving with the 118th Battery. He was stroke of a Trial Eight at Oxford in three successive years. 1911-12-13. and also for four years stroke of his college boat. He rowed in the Lyander four at Henley Regatta in 1913, and in the Oxford University Eight in March, 1914.

Masonic :

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley