Lot Essay
Gunner Sydney Stebbing, a Coventry man, enlised in the Royal Artillery in November 1914 and arrived in France with 3rd Battery, R.A. in April 1915. A pioneering member of the Motorised Machine-Gun Section, he died of wounds received in action at Zonnebeke on 3.5.1915:
'The enemy turned a machine-gun on to the Company with deadly effect. Private Stebbing received two bullet wounds in the left side immediately under the heart. The Doctor, with an Orderly, personally carried him on a stretcher to the second position, and he was then hurriedly taken away in a motor cart, arriving at the Casualty Clearing Station at Hazebrouch (sic) at 3 a.m. He died two and a half hours later peacefully but unexpectedly, and was buried the same day in the cemetery at Hazebrouch (sic)' (Local Newspaper refers).
Believed to be one of the very first casualties suffered by the Motorised Machine-Gun Section, R.A., Stebbing was interred in Haebrouck Communal Cemetery.
'The enemy turned a machine-gun on to the Company with deadly effect. Private Stebbing received two bullet wounds in the left side immediately under the heart. The Doctor, with an Orderly, personally carried him on a stretcher to the second position, and he was then hurriedly taken away in a motor cart, arriving at the Casualty Clearing Station at Hazebrouch (sic) at 3 a.m. He died two and a half hours later peacefully but unexpectedly, and was buried the same day in the cemetery at Hazebrouch (sic)' (Local Newspaper refers).
Believed to be one of the very first casualties suffered by the Motorised Machine-Gun Section, R.A., Stebbing was interred in Haebrouck Communal Cemetery.