Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
Ernest, born 1887, was the son of William and Isabella Davey. In 1911 the family was at 36 Bexley Street: William, a Clerk in the timber trade, Isabella (from Chester-le-Street), and four of their five children (all born Sunderland). Ernest was a Bricklayer, and his sisters Bertha and Winifred were teachers. In early 1918 the eldest sister, Mabel, married Ernest Jobling (see his page). The child not at home in 1911 was Herbert, who went to Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada.
On December 12th 1915 at Sunderland, Ernest, still of 36 Bexley Street but now a Market Gardener, enlisted. He was single, 28 years 4 months old, and 5' 10¼" tall. (Under the heading ‘Distinctive marks’, a distracted clerk has written ‘Protestant’!) On March 1st 1916 he was mobilized as a Private in the 22nd (Service) Battalion of the DLI – the Durham Pioneers. On June 16th he sailed from Southampton to Le Havre, but in November suffered a wrist injury in action. After treatment at Étretat and Birmingham, he was transferred to Woodcote Park Convalescent Hospital, Epsom (December 31st 1916 to January 25th 1917).
The Durham At War website describes what Private Davey and his fellow-Pioneers endured:
On 22 March 1916, 22 DLI moved to Scotton Camp, Catterick. Then, after intensive training, the battalion left for France on 16 June, just two weeks before the Battle of the Somme began. On 2 July, the Durham Pioneers, distinguished by the crossed rifle and pick collar badges they wore, joined the 8th Division. Immediately they went to work carrying supplies forwards and wounded soldiers back. Near La Boisselle, a group of Durham Pioneers set up a supply dump in a captured supply trench, during this work 5 men were wounded. These men were the battalion’s first casualties. The 22nd Battalion returned to the Somme battlefield in late October and lost over 30 men digging communication trenches and carrying wounded for the 8th Division.
On 31 July 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres began but 22 DLI had already been hard at work all summer digging new communication trenches and laying a new light railway track in preparation for the battle. This work, which cost of almost 100 casualties, including many injured by mustard gas, prompted Wilfrid Miles, author of the history of the DLI’s Service Battalions, to write: ‘No troops contributed more than the Pioneers to the hard-won successes in Flanders during the summer and autumn of 1917’ (page 199). Once the battle began, the Durham Pioneers dug and carried and suffered in the rain, mud and shell fire of Passchendaele.
On 21 March 1918, the German Army attacked on the Somme. The 8th Division moved forwards to the front, but was soon forced to retreat and the Durham Pioneers were needed to fight as infantrymen. During this fighting, the commanding officer, Colonel Cecil Morgan, who had brought the battalion out to France in 1916, was mortally wounded. When 22 DLI was finally relieved by French soldiers on 2 April, the Pioneers had lost almost 500 men killed, wounded or missing.
Ernest returned to France in June 1917. After leave in January 1918, it was back to active service. He was reported missing on March 26th 1918: his death ‘on or since’ that date was later presumed by the War Office. He has no known grave. On March 26th-27th 1918 the Durham Pioneers took part in the Battle of Rosières-en-Santerre; it is likely to be there that he lost his life.
Recipient of the British War Medal and Victory Medal.
Ernest Davey is remembered in Sunderland on S140.009, S140.010 and S140.048 part 2 page 40
He is also remembered in The DLI Book of Remembrance page 60
