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610820 1st/19th Battalion, London Regiment
James Mumford was born in Sudbury around 1886. By 1911 he was boarding with the Boggis family at 3 Clarence Road and was employed as a mat maker but he had moved to Tottenham Court Road in London by the time he enlisted in Camden Town.
He served with the London Regiment (formerly 3477) and first served in France on 18 August 1915. The battalion which formed part of 141st Brigade, 47th (2nd London) Division saw action that autumn at the Battle of Loos (25 September – 15 October). In the autumn of 1916 the Division saw action on the Somme at the Battles of Flers-Courcelette (15 – 22 September), when they captured High Wood, the Battle of Le Transloy (1 – 18 October) when they fought in the terrible conditions of heavy clinging chalky mud on the freezing flooded battlefield.
In the summer of 1917 the Division had moved to Belgium and saw action at the Battle of Messines (7 – 14 June). At 3.10a.m. on 7 June, the Allies detonated 19 enormous mines buried deep below German positions along a ridge outside Messines. The mines, made up of almost one million pounds of explosives, created one of the largest explosions before nuclear weapons.
James was listed as ‘missing’ in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press in August 1917. He was officially recorded as killed in action on 13 June 1917. There is no known grave and he is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.
A Cross of Remembrance was laid at the Menin Gate in April 2006, April 2009 and October 2012. He is also remembered on Baptist Church Memorial in Church Street.
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