Private Fred McDonald
201685 16th Royal Welsh Fusiliers
Died of Wounds 24th April 1918, aged 22
Lived at 66 Abel Street
Buried in Bagneux British Cemetery,Gezaincourt, France I.C.23
Burnley Express 1st May 1918

Son of William James & Jane McDonald,
Gezaincourt (near Amiens ) was the home of Casualty Clearing Station No 45 where Fred would have been taken and died.

ANOTHER ST. ANDREW’S BOY
GONE.
( Burnley Express 1st May 1918)

The other day Mrs Macdonald, of 66 Abel Street, received a letter from her son, Private Fred Macdonald, 201685, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who was in the Lewis Gun Section, stating that he was “in fine health,” but a day or two later he came to hand that he had been killed. Private Macdonald, who was 22 years of age and a driver at Pickles’ Mills, joined the Army on April 17th, 1916, and went abroad in June, 1917. He was associated with St. Andrew’s Sunday School and Church.
Sister Forest, writing under date April 24th from No. 3 Casualty Clearing Station, stated that the previous evening “Private Macdonald was brought into hospital badly wounded in the leg, and very ill. We did all we could for him, but he died in the morning. He was unconscious all the time.” On the same day the chaplain expressed his sympathy, and stated that there was no hope of the soldier living when he was brought into the hospital, and he died soon after. “I buried him this morning in the military cemetery close by,” concludes the Reverend C. Strcat. “And in due course a cross will be erected at his grave.