WW1 100 years on - Percy George Hansford

Name	Percy George Hansford
Address	North Cottage, Poxwell
Date of Birth Place	October 1889 Uploaders
Date of Death Place	08/05/1917 Battle of Arras, France
Family Info	He was the eldest child and only son of Ben and Emma Hansford who lived in Poxwell and latterly Osmington. He had younger sisters Elsie Florence May and Dorothy Violet. His mother died in August 1920 and is buried in Osmington churchyard and his father died in 1942.
Military Information: Killed May 1917 Percy served in the 1st battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Service Number 31715 formerly 17251 Dorset Regiment. He was killed in action at the final Battle of Arras one of the 158,000 British casualties.  Percy is commemorated at the Arras Memorial at Faubourg-D´Amiens Cemetery, which is located in Pas de Calais, France in Bay 6. although he does not have an identified grave.
Further Information: Before the war Percy worked as an assistant carrier driver in Askerswell and was living in Litton Cheney. Jock Lane from Poxwell recalled in 2012, “My grandmother had six sons and one daughter.  She was considered lucky of all things; lucky because only two of her sons were killed in the First World War. And that gives you some idea; I mean families were wiped out – we’d only lost two sons. But that is the sort of feeling of local feeling within these wars and we were never allowed to feel frightened”.