COMMEMORATED IN PERPETUITY BY THE

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The 15th Battalion of the Essex Regiment was formed in January 1917 and became a Garrison Guard Battalion on 27 April 1918. In May 1918 it mobilised for war and landed in France. on 12 May 1918 it transferred to the 177th Brigade of the 59th Division. On 16 July 1918 The title of ‘Garrison’ was dropped and the battalion engaged in various actions including; The general final advance in Artois and Flanders. Whilst moving North to take up their positions for the final advance, Lance Corporal Bunce was killed in action in the area of Grenay on 21 September 1918. Whilst the whereabouts of his grave is unknown, he is commemorated on the wall of The Loos Memorial which forms the side and back of Dud Corner Cemetery. The memorial commemorates over 20,000 officers and men who have no known grave, who fell in the area from the River Lys to the old southern boundary of the First Army, east and west of Grenay. The name "Dud Corner" is believed to be due to the large number of unexploded enemy shells found in the neighbourhood after the Armistice. On either side of the cemetery is a wall 15 feet high, to which are fixed tablets on which are carved the names of those commemorated.

The Bunce family line has existed for a long time in Steventon. George was born in a cottage on The Causeway, the eldest of five children. Georges father (1855) and grandfather (1829) were also both born in Steventon. George left a wife, Alice Mary Bunce and two children Irene Agnes (aged 15) and Philip Reginald (aged 13).

George was a Solicitor's Clerk before the war and was living in Oxford. On his Army pension record the address given for his wife (next of kin) was 7 Bartlemas Rd, Cowley, Oxford.

W J Bunce