Ernest Edward Corder

Rank: Private

Service Number: 17546

Date of Birth: 1887

Regiment: 1st Bn Suffolk Regiment

Date of Death: 12 February 1918

Age at death: 30

Cemetery / Memorial: Taranto Town Cemetery Extension

Country: Italy

Grave / Reference: B

Relatives: Son of William Corder

Address: 143 George Street

Ernest Edward Corder was born in 1887. By 1911 he was living at home with his father; William and his brothers and sisters at 43 George Street. At the time he was working as a cocoa mat weaver. In 1913 he married Albert Seager’s sister Rose and they had a daughter called Violet.

Before the outbreak of war the British Army was a relatively small professional force made up of regional battalions. It was the job of these battalions to secure the British Empire and its lines of communication in places like India, Malta and the East Indies. Occasionally they also had to be ready for conflict such as with the Second South African (Boer) War in 1900/01. Many young Hadleigh men enlisted into the Army for employment and for adventure and since the Suffolk Regiment with their barracks at Bury St Edmunds was the closest battalion to home, many Hadleigh men saw service with the Suffolks. All the Corder brothers served in the military.

The eldest was Harry Albert he was born in 1878 and enlisted in 1896/97 and served in the Boer War. He died of disease in South Africa in 1901 and as far as is known he is the only Hadleigh man to die in that conflict. He is remembered on the Suffolk Regiment memorial in the market square at Bury St Edmunds. The second brother was Charles William Corder born in 1880 he joined the Royal Navy in 1895, served throughout the war and afterwards lived in north west London and died at Barnet in 1954. The third brother William Turner Corder, was a Sergeant in the Suffolk Regiment and after the war settled in Colchester and died there in 1977. The youngest brother was Frank Stanley Corder, born in 1896, he served in the Royal Engineers and after the war settled back in Hadleigh as a harness maker, living at 88 Angel Street and died in 1982.

Family group with Ernest at the back in the centre

We are not sure when Ernest enlisted but his Medal Index Card says he arrived in France on 22 June 1915. When war broke out, the 1st battalion were on garrison duty in Khartoum, Sudan, in north east Africa and were quickly ordered home arriving in October. They were reinforced from the 3rd Suffolk Reserve battalion to a strength of almost one thousand men. In January 1915 they arrived in France to defend the newly established Western Front. They experienced the gas attacks during the Second Battle Ypres in Belgium in April and fought at the Battle of Loos in northern France during September.

In October 1915 they were ordered to the Salonika Front as part of the Macedonian Campaign around the Greek town of Salonika and here they remained until the end of the war. It was these back waters of the world conflict that in January 1918 the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir William Robinson, was recommending disengagement, as in his view this was a campaign that was going nowhere. This was a view that was over ridden by the War Cabinet and Prime Minister Lloyd George. General Robinson did have a point because for the men of the 1st Suffolks, the use of rifle and Lewis gun had turned to sport and it was the wild life of the Greek landscape that became the causalities; woodcock, teal, snipe and plenty of ducks and geese among them. It was a campaign where for the men the killers were sickness and disease rather than conflict.

A number of Hadleigh men served much of their war time service in the comparative quiet, albeit harsh environment of the Macedonian Front, but only Ernest was the only man who did not return home.

He was taken ill and evacuated across the Adriatic Sea to a base hospital in Taranto, Italy where he died of pneumonia. He was buried in the Taranto Town Cemetery and is remembered on the Hadleigh War Memorial.