Kenneth Gurney

Kenneth Gurney was born in 1887 to Walter Gurney, a Solicitor and Emily Constance Gurney. His parents lived at 11 Wellington Square in a house next door to the parents of Cyril Winterbotham whose cross is also in Cheltenham cemetery. Kenneth and Cyril’s fathers were partners in the firm of Winterbotham Gurney and Co in Rodney Road, Cheltenham.

Kenneth was educated at Northaw Place School (where Clement Attlee had been a pupil), Potters Bar, Rugby School and Oriel College, Oxford where he graduated in law. He worked for Druce and Attlee, Solicitors in London. Blanche Lillian Brown (also from Cheltenham) became his wife on 24th August 1915 at the parish church of St. Pancras, London. Sadly, Blanche died on 28th October 1917.

Having joined the Artists Rifles (28th London Regiment) Officer Training Corps, Kenneth was granted a commission in the 2/5th (Territorial) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in December 1916.

He saw fighting at Arras, Ypres and Poperinghe. On 2nd December 1917 he was fighting on the Arras front, defending trenches at La Vacquerie, when he was shot through the lung and shoulder and left for dead on the battleground. His family received a postcard from him detailing his injuries and explaining that both feet were now frost bitten and that he had been found by German soldiers on 4th December and taken to a German hospital. Sadly, he died as a Prisoner of War on 17th December 1917. It is so sad that his family joyfully received his postcard well after he had died.

Kenneth is buried at Honnechy British Cemetery Nord, Pas-de-Calais. In Cheltenham he is commemorated on the Cheltenham war memorial and on St. Paul’s Church war memorial.