Soldier Record

Driver Percy Spencer, my great-uncle, left a Reserved Occupation on the Midland Railway where he was part of a railway family with his father William and brothers. He joined up with friends and relatives to fight for king and country. He was part of the awful Battle of the Somme and, though details are scarce, it appears that he was killed on 8 September 1916 having carried out an operation under immense personal danger. For his courage and selfless bravery, he was posthumously awarded the Military Medal. His medal would have been given to his mother, Lucy Spencer, who visited his grave at the Quarry Cemetery, Montauban, some time in the 1920s, possibly after she became widowed in 1923.

he was killed on 8 September 1916 having carried out an operation under immense personal danger.

Percy's great-great-niece Fiona visited the cemetery while on a school visit to the World War I battlefields in the autumn of 2008 and, with great sadness and emotion, placed a card of remembrance with some of her friends. The realisation that her forebear paid the ultimate price with such courage and yet was one of many thousands of soldiers of many nationalities, some of whom are either buried anonymously or have no known grave. Percy is remembered on the Roll of Honour in Long Eaton Town Hall and has a weathered memorial on the grave of his parents and grandmother in West Park Cemetery in Long Eaton. We will remember him.