Rank: Gunner 966530 Regiment: Z 75th T.M. Bty.,Royal Field Artillery Died: 6 November 1917 Parish: Otterton Local Memorials: Otterton Memorial Cross Other Memorial: Gaza War Cemetery [Google] PDF Download: HART Ernest Goldney Winsor
Goldney, as he was known, was the son of Louis Hart, a wheelwright, and his wife Emily, who lived in a cottage opposite the Old Post Office, now demolished.
He was born in Otterton in October 1897 and would have attended the village school. There were five children in the family, and Goldney was the second. His brother, Reginald, also served in WW1 with the Wiltshire Regiment, but he survived.
Goldney enlisted as a Gunner in September 1914, at the beginning of the war at the age of 17. He had been working, according to the Census of 1911, as a “cowboy on farm”.
His enlistment paper is reproduced above. In 1917 Goldney was admitted to a field hospital in Salonika, in Greece, and was left there when C Battery embarked, which explains why he was serving with another unit when he died in action in Gaza. “Z” 75th was a Medium Trench Mortar Battery attached to the British Army’s 75th Division, raised for the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
In late October 1917, 75th Division took part in the invasion of Palestine in the face of Turkish and German opposition. On the night of November 6 and 7, it was involved in the capture of Gaza, which had been turned into a fortress by its occupiers.
Gunner 966560 Hart is remembered with honour at the Gaza War Cemetery and in Otterton.
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