Private George Gratton

Army Number: 15297

Battalion: 11th Battalion Sherwood Foresters (Notts & Derbys) Regiment.

Born and lived at Kneesall, Newark, Nottinghamshire. Son of John and Catherine Gratton, of Kneesall. He was a horseman on his father’s farm prior to enlisting at Worksop. He went to France on 27th August 1915 and was killed in action, on 1st July 1916, aged 21, during the attack on the German positions near Ovillers, France, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Commemorated: Thiepval Memorial, France. Pier and Face 10 C 10 D and 11 A.

Private George Gratton is also commemorated on the following local memorials:-
St. Bartholomew’s Church War Memorial, Kneesall, Nottinghamshire.
Budby War Memorial, Nottinghamshire.

His brother Private Walter Gratton, 9th Battalion Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire Regiment), also fell in the Great War.