Son of William Eggleston, of 8 Willmore St., Sunderland.
Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
Alexander was born in Sunderland in 1892, his brother Wallace two years later. They were among the five sons of William Eggleston and his wife Rachel (née Buttrey), married in Sunderland in 1889. In 1891 William, Ironmonger, Rachel and their year-old son Herbert are at Briery Vale Road, Bishopwearmouth. The family in 1901 were living at 7 Percy Street Crook. William was a Scotch Draper Traveller. George Edgar born 1899 and Oswald, 1900 were both born at Crook.
Rachel died in Sunderland in 1907, aged only 40. The 1911 census shows William, now a widower, and his four youngest sons at 24 Fernville Street, together with his niece Ethel May Burns. (William’s earlier trade of Ironmonger had followed an apprenticeship to his father – he has now changed his occupation to Draper’s Traveller) Alexander is a student: he attended Bede School.
The Bede Collegiate Magazine records in March 1915 that Alexander is in the 7th (Service) D.L.I at Gateshead. In July 1915 he has moved to Benton and remained there for the next eighteen months. By July 1917 he has risen to a Lance Corporal somewhere in England. ‘UK Soldiers Died in the Great War’ that he was formerly 1669, DLI. The 2nd/4th Lincolnshire Regiment was a territorial battalion, sent to France in February 1917 and involved in various actions on the Western Front including the pursuit of the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge and the Battle of Polygon Wood.
A significant landmark in the Ypres Salient, Polygon Wood had been fought over throughout the war, and its trees all but destroyed by shellfire. In 1916/17 the Germans had fortified it with multiple concrete block houses and thick tangles of barbed wire. Part of the notoriously costly Passchendaele campaign, casualties included many Australian and New Zealand troops, who have their own memorials.
The first day of the Battle of Polygon Wood was on September 26th 1917: it seems likely that this was where Sergeant Eggleston was killed in action.
He is remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, which bears the names of almost 35,000 officers and men whose graves are not known.
The Sunderland Echo 17/10/1917 reports:-
A lieutenant writing to Mr Eggleston 8 Willmore Street states that his son Sergt. Alex Eggleston was killed instantaneously by a shell when in action on Sept. 26th. He offers his own and the platoon's sympathy and also says Sergt. Eggleston was a loyal and brave assistant in all the work he was called upon to do. The deceased sergeant who was 24 was educated at the Bede Collegiate School and passed through the Sunderland Day Training College.
Alexander Eggleston is remembered at Sunderland on S140.009, S140.010, S140.017, S140.042, S140.048 part 4, S140.099, S140.117, S140.128 and S140.165