Edward Reginald Spofforth was the only son of Mrs Spofforth of Granville Road, Scarborough. He was born in York early in 1891 and was in School House from 1906 - 08. He joined the 5th Yorkshire Regiment and arrived in France in April 1915. Within a week he fought in the 2nd Battle of Ypres but then came down with scarlet fever and was invalided home for a month, stationed at the regimental depot in Scarborough.
He returned to the front line in January 1916 and was mortally wounded by a trench mortar shell on 2nd March 1916, dying in an hour.
His Commanding Officer wrote to his grieving widowed mother: “Your boy was such a keen soldier that we shall find the gap he leaves in the regiment difficult to fill. The gap he leaves in our hearts will be impossible to fill.”
He was 25 years old at the time of his death, and is buried in the military cemetery at Poperinge, a few miles west of Ypres in Belgium.
C Pendrill
Yarrow Fellow