Sergeant Frederick Daniel Cross
24th (Service) Battalion (2nd Sportsman’s), Royal Fusiliers (City of London) Regiment
Killed in Action
Date of Birth: 1888
Place of Birth: West Teignmouth, Devon
Date of Death: 31st July 1916 in France, aged 28
Buried: Delville Wood Cemetery, Somme. Remembered on Seafront Memorial and St. James’ Memorial Window, Teignmouth.
Awarded the 1914-15 Star, The British War Medal and the Victory Medal
Lance Sergeant Frederick (Fred) Daniel Cross age 28.
Born in 1888 in West Teignmouth, son of Frederick Charles and Emily Mills Cross, brother of Alice Cross.
In the 1891 census he was living with his family at Chelsea Place, Teignmouth.
1911 he was living with his parents and siblings at 5 Westbourne Terrace.
He was well known in the town and was a member of St James Church choir; he was a grocer’s assistant at Messrs. G Young & Sons.
Previously in the Teignmouth territorials Fred was one of 4 brothers all serving in the army as Sergeants.
Royal Fusiliers
(City of London) Regiment
Cap Badge
He enlisted in and was serving with the 24th (Sportsman’s) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, formed in November 1914; service no. SP/3148. Medical records show that he was wounded with a gunshot wound to his left shoulder and admitted to 18th General Hospital on 8 April 1916 and invalided home on 13 April.
Later that year Fred returned to his Battalion and he was killed in action at the Battle for Delville Wood on 31 July 1916.
Fred was buried in Delville Wood Cemetery, Somme.
Remembered on Seafront Memorial and St. James’ Memorial Window, Teignmouth.
A cousin of Alice Cross recalled the day an officer called to relate the sad news:
“I had gone across to my Aunt with a rice pudding. I was with her when she received the news. Her hair instantly turned white with shock on hearing of her son’s death”.
Delville wood
View from within Delville Wood, 20 September 1916. © IWM (Q 1156) Lieutenant Earnest Brooks
Frederick was in the 2nd Sportsman's Battalion (24th) of the Royal Fusiliers.
This was an overflow from the 1st (23rd) who were also at the Battle of Delville wood.
The whole of the battalion history can be downloaded as an ebook for free here.
“Every semblance of a trench seemed full of dead-sodden, squelchy, swollen bodies. Fortunately the blackening faces were invisible except when Verey lights lit up the indescribable scene. Not a tree stood whole in that wood.
We stood and lay on putrefying bodies and the wonder was that the disease (dysentery) did not finish off what the shells of the enemy had started.
There was hand-to-hand fighting with knives, bombs, and bayonets; cursing and brutality on both sides such as men can be responsible for when it is a question of “your life or mine”; mud and filthy stench; dysentery and unattended wounds; shortage of food and water and ammunition.”
Captain S. J. Worsley, DSO MC
From On the Front Line: True World War I Stories By Jon E. Lewis
Delville Wood Battle July 1916. By Ed. H.W. Wilson - Official British Military drawing. First published in "The Great War" Ed. H.W. Wilson, 1917, Public Domain
