3866 Pte Frederick Thomas Gris, 6th Dragoon Guards

Arrived overseas: 6 August 1914.

Connection: QSA and 1914 Star trio, plus father's Afghanistan and army LSGC medals.

Frederick Gris was the son of Thomas and Louisa Gris and was born in Ranikhet, India on the 3rd December 1879. Thomas Gris was a farrier sergeant serving with the 6th Dragoon Guards, and in due course, on the 28th January 1898, Frederick would also join the regiment. 

Frederick served overseas during the Second Anglo-South African War (Boer War), earning the Queen's South Africa Medal with clasps for Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill, Belfast and South Africa 1901. By 1911 he was still serving with the regiment, still a private, and stationed at Orange Free State, South Africa. He had almost certainly re-engaged to complete 21 years with the colours by this stage and he returned to England with the regiment in January 1913. The regiment was stationed at Canterbury when Britain went to war, and a day after being mobilised on the 5th August 1914, Frederick was in France, presumably part of an advanced party as the regiment did not actually arrive en masse until the 15th August.

Less than a month later, Frederick was dead, having died in a Rouen hospital. Soldiers Died in the Great War records that he 'died' which is usually shorthand for dying as a result of sickness or accident. He had arrived overseas as a private but was hurriedly promoted shortly thereafter, and it is the rank of sergeant which appears on his headstone and in medal records.

After the war, Frederick's mother received a pension of five shillings a week, being wholly incapacitated. Her son is buried in Saint Sever Cemetery Extension in Rouen.