Bonner

Isaac Harold Bonner

Appears as:

Born:

Parents:

Unit:

No.:

Rank:

Died:

Grave/Memorial:

Bonner, Isaac H

29 July 1894, Pirbright

Isaac and Isabella (née Gilham)

7th Battalion/10th Battalion,
The Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment

G.4471

Private

6 August 1917, Belgium, age 24

Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium: Panel 13

Biography:
Isaac Harold Bonner was born on 29 July 1894, the son of Isaac, a labourer, and Isabella (née Gilham). Isaac was the fourth of five
surviving children, having two brothers and two sisters.

In 1911, aged 17, Isaac was working as a farm labourer.

Isaac joined the 7th Battalion, The Queen's (Royal West Surrey) Regiment and was deployed in July 1915. He seems to have used
his middle name of Harold as that is how he is recorded on most records.

Isaac was wounded on 1st July 1916 and evacuated home. He returned to action in February 1917, with the 10th Battalion.

Isaac Harold Bonner died on 6th August 1917. The battalion war diary describes this as ‘a quiet day’; it is likely that Isaac was
wounded on the previous day, during the Battle of Passchendaele, when the Germans attacked the village of Hollebeke, Belgium and
the battalion sustained heavy casualties. His final resting place is unknown; his name, with others of his regiment, appears on Panel
13 of the Menin Gate Memorial.

The Ypres Salient stretched from Langemarck in the north to the northern edge in Ploegsteert Wood in the south, but it varied in area and shape throughout the
war. The Salient was formed during the First Battle of Ypres in October and November 1914, when a small British Expeditionary Force succeeded in securing
the town before the onset of winter, pushing the German forces back to the Passchendaele Ridge. The battles of the Ypres Salient claimed many lives on both
sides and it quickly became clear that the commemoration of members of the Commonwealth forces with no known grave would have to be divided between
several different sites.

The Menin Gate Memorial commemorates those of all Commonwealth nations, except New Zealand, who died in the Salient - in the case of United Kingdom,
casualties before 16 August 1917 (with some exceptions).