When Bertie Ruffles was baptised at St Andrew’s, Bordesley, Birmingham, it was 11th November 1885 and nine-month-old baby Bertie, the last of his parents’ eight surviving children can have had no idea the significance that date would come to bear in the years to come.
He enlisted into the local militia in 1899, aged only 14, but his height allowed him to pass for the 17 years he claimed, and he embarked for South Africa when the Boer War erupted, serving abroad for almost two years.
When he got home to Small Heath again, a sun-burned Army veteran of Wittenbergen and Cape Colony, he was still barely 17.
Settling down to a steady job as fitter in a cycle manufacturer’s, 21-year-old Bert married his sweetheart Florence Roberts in December 1906.
And when the Great War came, he was a father to two little girls, Ivy and Dotty, and under no obligation to re-enlist.
But volunteer he did, embarking for France on Boxing Day 1914 with his old Regiment.
Bert would be wounded six months later, but he was patched up and returned to his Battalion.
On 23rd November 1915, Bert and his 2nd South Staffs took over trenches around Gibson’s Crater at Cuinchy, east of Bethune.
On the 24th, “mining was suspected” beneath the northern tip of the crater, but the mining officer was consulted and could not confirm these suspicions.
Bert had to hold the line, despite the Battalion’s uneasiness.
All day, a steady hail of rifle-grenades and heavy Howitzer shells plagued the South Staffordshires.
Until 4.30pm, when “the enemy exploded a mine directly under Gibson’s Crater and buried the whole of the garrison with the exception of two men who were blown some distance and killed.”
Digging parties were organised by the shocked survivors and about six men pulled from the earth but the rest were just gone.
They never found Ivy and Dotty’s Dad, and he’s remembered now on the Loos Memorial which sits proudly on the fosse-dotted plain a few miles south of where he died.
A quiet, unassuming hero who loved his little girls, Bert Ruffles went to war as little more than a child himself, but readily volunteered for another conflict when it came and he is Not Forgotten.
Comments