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SKELTON - IN - CLEVELAND
IN HISTORY
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"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"
27904 Guardsman GEORGE VINTER.
3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards.
Killed in action, age 19, on the 17th November 1917.
Born Guisborough, N Yorks. Enlisted at Saltburn by Sea.
Son of George and Mary Vinter, of 59 Red Lion St, Redcar, N Yorks.
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Cambrai Memorial, Louverval.
16k SW of Cambrai.
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FAMILY:-
1911. George, aged 13, was living at 8 Harker St, Skelton Green, N Yorks. He had been born in Guisborough, N Yorks.
His father, George, aged 43, was an Ironstone Miner who worked at the face. He had been born in Eston, N Yorks.
His mother, Mary Annie, aged 45, had been born in Middlesbrough. She had had 8 children and 7 were still living.
George had two sisters living at home, Amelia, 9 and Elsie, 5.
By the time the CWGC made the memorials the family appear to have moved to Red Lion St, Redcar, Yorks.
WAR SITUATION:-
The 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards were attached to 2nd Guards Brigade, Guards Division.
George's Medal Card shows that he was not awarded the 1914/15 Star and therefore did not join his Battalion in France until 1916 or later.
Private Vinter lost his life in the Battle of Cambrai.
Sir Douglas Haig described the object of the Cambrai operations as the gaining of a 'local success by a sudden attack
at a point where the enemy did not expect it' and to some extent they succeeded.
The proposed method of assault was new, with no preliminary artillery bombardment.
Instead, tanks would be used to break through the German wire, with the infantry following under the cover of smoke
barrages.
However, by 22 November, as usually happened with offensives in the First War, a halt was called for rest and reorganisation, allowing the Germans to reinforce.
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MEMORIAL
On a terrace at one end of the Louverval Military cemetery stands the Cambrai Memorial, which commemorates more
than 7,000 servicemen of the United Kingdom and South Africa who died in the Battle of Cambrai in November and December
1917 and whose graves are not known.
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