Date of Death

3 Sep 1917

Clerk in straw hat factory

James Briggs & Co, King Street

7 Moor Street

Palestinian Territory

Gaza War Cemetery

War Memorial Location

The Luton News , 4th October 1917

Rifleman Sydney David East, 451810, 1/11th Battalion London Regiment, was killed in action in Palestine on September 3rd, 1917. He was aged 24 and the son of William and Emily East, of Lyndhurst, 7 Moor Street, Luton.

In a letter to Mrs East, Second Lieut A. Hamilton wrote: "I tender the heart-felt sympathy of myself and and all the No. 11 platoon. Your son met what must have been an instantaneous death by a bullet wound in the head in a patrol encounter on the night of September 3rd.

"His body is interred in Essex Cemetery, on the bank of a gully known as Welsh Wadi, running just behind our line."

A chum of the deceased soldier wrote to his fiancee [Miss Agnes Godfrey, of Cromwell Road, Luton]: "We were together to the last. On our way back to the trenches we met an enemy patrol and, after a short engagement, Syd was shot through the head, death being instantaneous. I, with five others, dug his grave."

Sydney East had been employed as a clerk at the straw hat factory of James Briggs & Co, of King Street, Luton. He had also been a member of the Chapel Street Wesleyan Sunday school.

He joined up in October 1915 and went to Egypt in March 1916.
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