8355 L/Sergeant John Gale, 2nd Bedfordshire Regiment
Arrived overseas: 6 October 1914. Connection: Medal group comprising 1914 Star trio and Army LSGC. John William Beeby Gales was born at Ellington, Huntingdonshire in September 1877, the son of Angelina Gale (nee Smith) and Charles Gale who had married at Huntingdon in 1871. On 23rd October 1905 he enlisted with the Bedfordshire Regiment aged 18 years and one month, giving his trade as farm labourer. In the years prior to the First World War, John Gale served overseas in Gibraltar, Bermuda and South Africa, and the 2nd Battalion was still in South Africa, at Robert's Heights, Pretoria, when Britain went to war with Germany. The battalion was mobilised on the 10th August and Gale and the rest of the battalion set sail for England aboard HMT Kenilworth on the 27th of that month. After a brief stop at the island of St Helena, the battalion arrived at Southampton on the 19th September where it was assigned to the 21st Infantry Brigade in the 7th Division. The battalion saile...