Private Henry Ince was the son of Son of Thomas and Elizabeth Ince, of Barton Rd., Farndon, Chester. He was the brother of Albert Ince who was killed in the Third Battle of Ypres, Belgium in October 1917 and is also on the Farndon Memorial.

Census record of 1871 (Barton Road Farndon) shows Henry's father Thomas as a 9 year old scholar.

Research continues into his life in Farndon and his war record.

2nd Battalion, Cheshire Regiment

At the time war broke out the 2^nd Cheshires had been in India for four years, stationed at Jubbulpore. When war was declared in August 1914, they were immediately ordered home, arriving back in Britain on Christmas. Thomas Weaver, from Barton, also on the War Memorial, also signed on for the 2nd Battalion. By 16 January 1915, the Battalion was ready to leave for the Front and embarked for Le Havre from Southampton.

By 5 February 1915, the Battalion was occupying positions at Blauwepoort Farm, facing the Ypres Salient, just south of the town centre of Ypres (now Ieper). It was here that Thomas lost his life no 17th February 1915. He was probably buried just behind the front line. Over the course of the war, many of these small front line burial areas were destroyed by the later warfare or their positions simply lost. Thomas now has no known grave and he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ieper.

In October 1915 the 2nd Cheshires moved Egypt and then on to Salonika.

Modern map of Greece. Salonika is known today as Thessalonika

Campaign map of 1915. Salonika is bottom, centre

Salonica campaigns.

In the summer of 1915, Bulgaria entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers; in September, Bulgaria attacked Serbia. An Allied expeditionary force that landed at Salonica in an effort to aid Serbia attempted to join forces with the Serbians but was thwarted by the Bulgarian victory at Babuna pass.

The Allies retreated to the vicinity of Salonica. Meanwhile the Greek government under Venizelos, which had decided to support the Allies, fell when it was repudiated by King Constantine I. The Allies fostered the establishment at Salonica of a rival Greek government, under Venizelos, which declared war on the Central Powers. After the Allies began an invasion of Greece, Constantine abdicated (June, 1917) and Greece formally joined the Allies. A number of unsuccessful Allied campaigns were launched against the German and Bulgarian forces.

Salonika 1918

Finally, in September 1918, a new offensive was launched, and the Allies advanced northward along the entire front. Bulgaria capitulated on September 30, Serbia was recovered by November 1, and on November 10 Romania was captured. The armistice of November 11 1918, ended the campaign.

At the beginning of 1918 the Allied troops in Salonika were prepared for a major offensive intended to end the war in the Balkans. The Greek Army had been reorganised and joined the Allied force. The offensive began in July 1918 but the British contingent did not play a significant part until early September. Then the British attacked a series of fortified hills. The final assault began along the whole front on 15 September 1918; the British being engaged in the Lake Doiran area. This battle was really on the 18 and 19 September 1918 and was a disaster for the British Divisions. They had to frontally assault 'Pip Ridge' which was a 2000 foot high heavily defended mountain ridge with fortresses built on some of the higher mountains, notably Grand Couronne. (This was what the Bulgarians had been working on in the first months of 1916 and early 1917.) They sustained very heavy casualties. (source: The Long Long Trail)

A report on The Long Long Trail from one involved gives some idea of what the men went through. By 'An Unprofessional Soldier' on the Staff of 28th Division, he entitled his paper, " I saw the Futile Massacre at Doiran". It is from Issue 46 of " I Was There" published 1938/9.

See here - The Long Long Trail - Salonika 1918

Mikra British Cemetery

At the invitation of the Greek Prime Minister, M.Venizelos, Salonika (now Thessalonika) was occupied by three French Divisions and the 10th (Irish) Division from Gallipoli in October 1915. Other French and Commonwealth forces landed during the year and in the summer of 1916, they were joined by Russian and Italian troops. In August 1916, a Greek revolution broke out at Salonika, with the result that the Greek national army came into the war on the Allied side. The town was the base of the British Salonika Force and it contained, from time to time, eighteen general and stationary hospitals. Three of these hospitals were Canadian, although there were no other Canadian units in the force.

The earliest Commonwealth burials took place in the local Protestant and Roman Catholic cemeteries, and the Anglo-French (now Lembet Road) Military Cemetery was used from November 1915 to October 1918. The British cemetery at Mikra was opened in April 1917, remaining in use until 1920. The cemetery was greatly enlarged after the Armistice when graves were brought in from a number of burial grounds in the area. Mikra British Cemetery now contains 1,810 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, as well as 147 war graves of other nationalities. Within the cemetery will be found the Mikra Memorial, commemorating almost 500 nurses, officers and men of the Commonwealth forces who died when troop transports and hospital ships were lost in the Mediterranean, and who have no grave but the sea. They are commemorated here because others who went down in the same vessels were washed ashore and identified, and are now buried at Thessalonika.

The cemetery is the rectangular plot surrounded by trees in the centre