Private Ernest Oliver FAULKNER (2822604)
6th Battalion Seaforth Highlanders

Date of birth: Unknown
Date of death: 27th May 1940

Killed in action aged 1939
Buried at Bedford House Cemetery Belgium Enclosure No 6 Plot V Row B Grave 6
Oliver Ernest Faulkner was the son of Arthur E. Faulkner and Mary A. Faulkner of Chippenham in Cambridgeshire but later lived at Pitchroy.

On the 25th of May 1940 the 6th Battalion Seaforth Highlanders was ordered to fill a gap along the Ypres-Comines Canal caused by the collapse of the Belgian army. By the following morning they were holding a line to the left of a bridge along a railway line which was on the extreme left of the entire British Expeditionary Force. French armoured support, which had been promised, did not materialise and they were subjected to attack from German tanks, mortars aircraft and infantry. By the morning of the 27th of May the battalion was reduced to company strength and were at Zillebeke to the south east of Ypres. The German attacks continued the next day and, in the words of Ted Mitchell-Smith the Battalion Signals Officer remembered that they were "exhausted, hungry, outnumbered, but still fighting on in the sweltering heat."

The battalion pulled back on the night of the 27th/28th. Ernest Faulkner fell during the fighting.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Chippenham.
Pitchroy

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