Sapper H. Walburn

FIRST NAMES: Herbert

UNIT: Royal Engineers

NUMBER:426637

STATUS: Killed in Action

DATE OF DEATH: 25th April 1918

CEMETERY OR MEMORIAL: The Loos Memorial, France

AGE: 33

Herbert was born in West Hartlepool and was the son of Mr & Mrs R Walburn of L'Espec Street, Northallerton. His father ran a bootmakers shop in Zetland Street and his younger brother Thomas had been killed during the Battle of The Somme and is also named on the Northallerton Memorial.

Herbert was married, with one young son, Rowland, and he lived at North End. He enlisted at Ferryhill, County Durham, in June 1916, before which he had worked as a bricklayer for Lazenby's of Ferryhill. He is commemorated on a memorial stone in Northallerton Cemetery which sadly has been very badly damaged. He shares the memorial with his brother in law who it states was killed in a motorcycle accident on Thirsk Road in 1925.

He was killed, aged 33, during the German Spring Offensive of 1918 which saw the Germans making huge advances, the like of which had not been seen since the early days of the War in 1914. The fact that the British positions were overrun by the victorious Germans meant that a large proportion of the British dead were relatively hastily buried and often identities went unrecorded. Thus many graves were never found and many of the bodies in those that were found could not be identified when the ground was recaptured during the Allied advance later in the year. Herbert Walburn was one of those who has no known resting place and he is commemorated on the Loos Memorial to the Missing.