BY COINCIDENCE, just days after Pte Harry Miller, of the 11th Northumberland Fusiliers, appeared on our list of soldiers whose names were missing from the Darlington memorial, his newly identified body was laid to rest at the Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium, in a ceremony that made the national news headlines.
He was killed, aged 28, at the Battle of Passchendaele on October 14, 1917, and, after more than 100 years, his remains have been identified. On Wednesday, he was buried alongside eight other Fusiliers, including Pte Arnold Sanderson, who also came from Darlington. Pte Sanderson had won the Military Medal the day before his death, and his name is on the memorial at the hospital (complete with the anotation MM), but Harry's is not.
Harry (above) was born in 1888 and christened at St Paul’s Church in the north end of Darlington. In the 1891 census, he was living with his parents, James and Annie, in Reservoir Cottages in Harrowgate Hill – stories this week say he hailed from Cockerton, but we think that at the time of the First World War, Harrowgate Hill was in the Cockerton parish.
In 1901, the family were living in Kilburn, in North Yorkshire, and in 1909, Harry married Melita, probably at Gainford. They went to live in Burton Leonard, to the south of Ripon, where Harry was a farm labourer, and they had four children in four years.
But in 1915, Melita died, and the children went to live with Harry’s parents who were now living in Teesdale House on The Green in Gainford.
When Harry was killed, his orphans – Annie, James, Minnie and George – were brought up by their grandparents.
The coffins of Pte Miller and Pte Sanderson await burial this week
READ MORE: THE 155 DARLINGTON MEN MISSING FROM THE TOWN'S WAR MEMORIAL
READ MORE: FIRST WORLD WAR SOLDIERS WHO FELL AT YPRES BURIED AFTER 100 YEARS
With thanks to researcher Paul Henderson
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