Ernest Ewart Gladstone Alderwick
E. E. G. Alderwick
Born 4 April 1886, Montpellier, Bristol
Died 26 August 1917, Peronne, France
Second Lieutenant Suffolk Regiment
Bristol born in 1886, Ernest Ewart Gladstone Alderwick (by 1911 he had dropped the Ernest and was known as Ewart) was the son of Francis, a Bristol based Insurance Inspector with the Provident Association of London. A local cricketer, starting out with the YMCA, where his father was a member, he went on to play for the Imperial Club. In a game between the two clubs in May 1908 his father, by then aged 49, got him out twice for four and a second innings duck! Such form, two months later saw young Ernest, aged 22 making his debut for Gloucestershire against Worcestershire at New Road where he fared little better, scoring two and five as Worcestershire won the game by 226 runs. Retained for the next match away to Northants he batted once in a rain affected drawn game where he failed to score. An end of season review in the Western Daily Press commented “Alderwick, whose selection appears to have occasioned much surprise in local cricket circles, will have to improve his play materially before he can hope to score in first-class cricket.”
There was to be no more first-class cricket. In August 1914 he did, however, play a couple of matches in the Minor Counties Championship for Sussex, although again, without distinction. He joined the 15th Gloucesters as a private in August 1916, became a lance-corporal with the 2nd Dorsets and eventually gained a commission as a Second Lieutenant with the 11th Suffolks on 19 June 1917. Just over two months later on 28 August he was killed in action whilst leading his men in a night attack on Hargicourt. Reporting his death on 6 September, the Western Daily Press said that he had “endeared himself to all his comrades regardless of rank not only by his cheery nature, but also by an unselfish act when on a long and tiring march he had carried the pack of one of his men who was in distress.”
