GUNNER JAMES SUMNER
ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY
27TH MAY 1917 AGE 28
BURIED: BARLIN ROAD CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
This is a real cry of despair from Mrs Rose Sumner, a widow whose husband had died in 1913. It must have been an emotion felt by many of the bereaved but no one has articulated it quite so plainly as this. The 1901 census shows there to have been a nine-year-old daughter, May. But there is no trace of her later.
James Sumner's father had been a stone mason, as his father had been before him, but James became a professional soldier. The 1911 census shows him to have been serving in India with the 64th Battery, 5th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. He was with the same battery when he died of wounds in a Casualty Clearing Station on 27 May 1917.
There is no individual information about Sumner's death but the 5th Brigade's war diary records it as being in Cite de Caumont where hostile planes, hostile balloons and hostile shelling are a daily occurance.