Ernest Cutler
Ernest Cutler was 23 years of age when he died of wounds on the 6th October 1917, sustained during the Third Battle of Ypres (wrongly known as the Battle of Passchendaele) in Belgium.
He had been wounded previously in the right shoulder at Serre on the 1st July 1916 whilst helping to bandage a fellow Pal in No Man’s Land. He was treated at Cheltenham Hospital and then transferred to the 3rd Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment upon recovery and ended up in the 1st Battalion. Ernest is buried in Dozinghem Military Cemetery and on his grave his family had inscribed the words “A loved one gone before”.
Ernest Cutler was born in Blackburn in 1894, the eldest of three children born to his parents George and Eliza. In 1901 they were living at Saunders Road in the Witton Park area of Blackburn. He married Edith Garstang at Ebenezer Chapel on Cunliffe Street in Chorley in 1912; they lived with his parents at 37 Steeley Lane with their son Stanley who was born in 1912.
Prior to enlisting in the Pals on the 23rd September 1914, Ernest worked for Smith Fielden (Fish Merchants).
