PRIVATE JOHN GEORGE SADLER
KING'S OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY
3RD JULY 1916 AGE 33
BURIED: HEILLY STATION CEMETERY, MERICOURT-L'ABBE, FRANCE
John George Sadler was a married man. In 1911 he had three children aged 6, 3 and 17 months, and worked at Whitwood Colliery, Yorkshire as a coal hewer, the man responsible for actually hewing the coal from the coal face. He served with D Company, 10th Battalion the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, which was formed at the beginning of September 1914.
On 1 July 1916, the opening day of the Somme campaign, the battalion made a successful attack on Crucifix Trench and the Sunken Road in the region of La Boiselle. At the end of the day 162 members of the battalion were missing: 58 had been killed and 265 wounded. Sadler was among the wounded. He died two days later at one of the Heilly Casualty Clearing Stations.
Sadler's wife chose his inscription. Unlike Private Haywood whose inscription states that "his life was taken away", Sadler "gave his life". This suggests that he was a volunteer and certainly the 10th Battalion were originally a volunteer battalion. Sadler died for his King, country, home, love and duty; Haywood for his mother, father, sisters, brother and his country. The itemising of the causes for which men died is both illuminating and fascinating.