A. G. V. Sales
Service no. 242156
Private, Leicestershire Regiment, “A” Coy. 2nd/5th Battalion
Killed in action on 26 September 1917, aged 33
Born in Battersea; enlisted in Lambeth; lived in Clapham.
CWGC: “Son of Mrs T. Sales, of 36 Peardon Street, Clapham, London.”
Remembered at Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium

British Army WWI Service Records 1914-1920

On 18 April 1918 Albert Sales was “regarded for official purposes as having died on or around 26/9/17”. He had gone missing during the chaos of battle. He had been at the front for three months.

Sales, a sheet metal worker, presented himself at the recruiting office on 24 February 1916. He gave his address as 82 Larkhall Lane, Clapham. He was measured (5 feet 6¼ inches, with a 35-inch chest expandable by 3 inches), over 10 stone. The Army observed that he had a squint in his right eye.

Like many other conscripts, he went into the Army Reserve, waiting his turn to be mobilised. There he stayed until 4 October 1916. Then he was trained and packed off to France in February 1917. However, Sales had repeated trouble with a septic foot. He was injured on 28 April, but did not receive treatment until 9 May. It continued to give him trouble throughout May. Then in late June he was sent to the Front, and went missing.

Information from the 1911 census

Albert George Victor Sales’s mother, Theresa Sales, a 56-year-old railway waiting room attendant from Doncaster, was living at 172 Stewart’s Road with her youngest child, Archibald Oliver Sales, 15, and married daughter Elizabeth Gertrude Riley, 29, and her two children.