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A blue plaque to commemorate four
brothers who were killed in World War One has been given pride
of place in the family’s old road.
Harry, Arthur, Bertie and George Cooper lived with their family
in Gooseberry Hall in South Street, Braintree, when war broke
out in 1914.
Rifleman Harry, 26, of the 1st Battalion Queen Victoria’s
Rifles, was the first to die at the Somme on October 2, 1916.
His body was never found and his name features on the Memorial
to the Missing at Thiepval in France.
Next was Arthur, 29, a Private in the Essex Regiment, who died
of wounds on March 25, 1917.
Their 21-year-old brother Bertie followed on April 9, 1917 - he
was killed in action while serving as a Private in the 9th
Battalion Essex Regiment.
Bertie’s name remains on the Arras Memorial in France.
The final blow to their widower father, Joseph, and his
remaining two sons and three daughters, was 24-year-old George’s
death on August 5, 1917.
George, a rifleman in the 10th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, was
killed in action and, like Harry, his body was never found.
His name appears on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at
Ypres in Flanders.
Braintree and Bocking Civic Society proudly put up the plaque
last Tuesday May 5 on the back of the wall around the Warner
Garden at the junction of South Street and Fairfield Road. .
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