Current Information:

Age-25

Burntwood Grange, Burntwood Lane, Tooting

Houplines Communal Cemetery, France

For most of the winter of 1914-1915, the 16th London battalion of 18 Brigade, 6th Division were holding trenches opposite the village of Frelinghien on the French-Belgian border just to the north of Armentières with a system of reliefs whereby individual companies moved back for 4 day periods of rest. The battalion diary for 4th February, the day on which Ernest Reekes was killed, recorded that the enemy were generally quiet and that there was an ordinary amount of sniping.