Gordon Simpson

View Gordon on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website
Service number:
13/651
Rank:
Sergeant
Service:
New Zealand Mounted Machine Gun Squadron
Origin:
Date of birth:
13 July 1888
Date of death:
30 March 1918
Age at Death:
29
SIMPSON Gordon

Known information

Gordon Simpson, who emigrated to New Zealand, is remembered in the churchyard at Exton with a little memorial in the Simpson family plot. His father Robert was born in Exton but moved with his wife Henrietta and eldest son William to Wilbarston in Northamptonshire where Gordon was born. We can find no link between Exton and Gordon, apart from his father and elder brother William being born there. Robert, Henrietta and William now all share a grave. Gordon's memorial stands in front of this main grave detailing how he died fighting in the Middle East during the First World War. On the gravestone it says he was 30 years old although the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has him as 29 years old. Gordon was a member of the League of Frontiersmen in New Zealand, an organisation set up in 1905 in London to protect the Empire from being invaded. He enlisted in Ngaruawahia, joining the Auckland Mounted Rifles, and left aboard the Star of India on 16 October 1914, arriving in Suez in Egypt on 3 December 1914. He died on the 30 March 1918 in Palestine and was originally buried at Amman. But his grave was lost and he is now remembered on the Jerusalem Memorial, and on the war memorial in Auckland.

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  • Exton Church
  • G Simpson Memorial 1
  • G Simpson Family 1
  • Tyne Cot NZ Memorial Apse 2a
  • Jerusalem Memorial 1
  • Jerusalem Memorial 2
  • G Simpson 2
  • G Simpson 3

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Rutland and The Battle of the Somme

More than 90 Rutland soldiers died in the Battle of the Somme which lasted from 1 July 1916 until the middle of November. Today they lie in cemeteries across the old battlefield in northern France or are remembered among the 72,000 names on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. By using our interactive map, you can find out what happened to them.

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