Peter Filder's Story.
Peter was born in Stockport in 1895, the son of Arthur and Abigail. The 1901 census showed the family living at 17 Mottram Street. At that time he had two sisters - Ada (then 9) and Martha (1). By 1911 the family had moved to number 3 Trafford Street, Stockport, his father Arthur was working for the cleansing department at the borough council, Abigail and his sister Ada were working as Boom Hands for one of the spinning mills, Martha was at school as was his younger brother Charles age 8. Peter age 16 was working in the hatting department of one of the local stores.
Peter is thought to have enlisted into the army, as a conscript, sometime after the end of 1916 and was originally assigned to the local 6th Territorial Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment. His service number was 266252 - six digit service numbers did not start to be issued until the beginning of 1917. However, this service does not appear on his medal entitlement records. This confirms that he never served abroad with the Cheshires and was, no doubt, transferred to the Liverpool Regiment when he finished training.
Peter's last tour of duty in the trenches started on 21 May 1918, when the Battalion went into the front line near the French village of Gommecourt (in the north of the 1916 Somme battlefield). The Battalion's War Diary contains very little details of the following days. It appears to have been a quiet time with no major action on either side. As always, patrols went out into No Man's Land during the night to try to gain intelligence or to attack opposing patrols. During the time in the trenches, 9 members of the Battalion, including Peter, were killed. The cause was probably enemy shelling. He is buried at Couin New British Cemetery about 5 kilometres behind the front line position in a cemetery used by the Field Ambulance. This suggests that, perhaps, he was not killed outright, but was in the process of being moved down the casualty evacuation chain when he died very shortly afterwards. Official records, however, record that he was "killed in action" rather than "died of wounds".
The soldiers efects register shows his War Gratuity was split with his family, Abigail, Charles, Martha and Ada all received £3 12s 11d