Next stop, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Herbert Dobson Bell ... and Amy

To give some idea of the number of casualties in the First World War, the first search for a Herbert Dobson Bell at www.cwgc.org revealed that 118 H Bells had died during the First World War. We didn't know which unit he was with although coming from the north of England, it was quite likely that both brothers had been with regiments from that part of the country. Eventually I knew I'd found the right H Bell when the "Additional information" showed the names of his parents. This was quite fortunate as not all of the records show this.

We now knew that Herbert Dobson Bell had served in the 8th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment, had supposedly died on 25th September 2015 and that his grave was in row 1D of the Noeux-les-Mines communal cemetery. The date corresponds to his unit's action in the Battle of Loos which had started at 6:30am on that day.

What was a real surprise was that Herbert had been married. The "Additional information" in Herbert's CWGC record mentioned "husband of Amy Bell of IA, Belle Vue". Belle Vue is most likely the town of Bellevue in Iowa in the US and was named after John D. Bell, an early settler in the Jackson County area. It will be interesting to see if Amy was already a Bell before her marriage. A visit to the Iowa Genealogy Web for Jackson County is on the cards. More of that later.

Redford Bell

 

A search for Redford Bell came up with information about the same parents, showed that he was with the 7th Battalion of the Border Regiment, had died on 23rd April 1917 and was commemorated on the Arras Memorial in bay 6. 23rd April was the first day of the Second Battle of the Scarpe so presumably he had gone missing in that action.