Harold Herbert Edmund Gibbs was severely injured at 5.00am on 28/05/1940 when a German artillery shell landed in the small chapel that they were sleeping in. He suffered appalling injuries from which he died a day or so later. Apparently with further research it was found that he was in Kemmel Belgium, when the Brigade HQ was deployed in the stable block of the Kemmel Chateau.
His grandson discusses on the WW2Talk website that Haold was a sarjeant in the RCS and was serving in the signals detachment attached to 10th Inf Bde HQ. His letters home alluded to a sore derriere from the large amount of riding of motorcyles over potholed roads.
Harold had re-enlisted in the TA in early 1939 and was at Annual Camp at Dibgate Camp, near Folkestone when war was declared, so he was embodied on the spot.
The signals detachment serving the whole of 10th Inf Bde amounted to 256 men in 56 vehicles, when they landed at St Nazaire, France in September 1939.
It is likely the website discusses that Harold passed away at a CCS in Steenvoorde in France and was left behind. He would have been interred in a shallow temporary grave there but later disinterred and collected by the Deutsche Rote Creuz. Isolated temporary grave sites were, apparently, often collected, recorded and reinterred in a centralised military cemetery - the largest of these in the location being Dunkirk Town Cemetery.
Then the British Army was notified of the burial, name and number. There was a delay of over 18 months between him being as posted missing and the war office being notified that he was confirmed as dead and buried.
