ALFRED BLIGH
472064, Private
46th Battalion Canadian Infantry  (Saskatchewan Regiment)
Who died aged 29 on 19 November 1916

Bergh Apton-born Alfred was the youngest child of Walter & Emma Bligh who were living at The Red Cottage (now Watermeadows) at Bussey Bridge in 1879 and at Rose Cottage Farm on Langley Road at the time of the 1881 Census.  By 1890 his parents had moved to Seething Fen on the south side of the River Chet.
He emigrated to Canada from Liverpool on the ship Teutonic in June 1911 and took a land grant in the Province of Saskatchewan near the small community of Paswegin.  His brothers Knightly (aka Jack) and Ewing were close neighbours with homesteads of their own.  It was from his homestead that he volunteered for war service in June 1915, joining the 46th Canadian Infantry Regiment that was raised in Saskatchewan. 

He died on 19 November 1916 in the Battle of the Ancre.  The Battalion’s war diary records him as a member of its Machine Gun section who was killed in an attack made in atrocious conditions on German positions to the north of Courcelette.  His body was not recovered and he is remembered on the Canadian Memorial on Vimy Ridge.

Alfred’s brother Ewing returned to England at some time after WW1 to farm in Framingham Earl where his daughter Ann Cooper still lives (2009).   His sister Ethel married to become Ethel Bloomfield and settle on the Alpington side of Mill Road in a house she named The Homestead in memory of her brothers’ Canadian prairie connections.

Because his family lived at various times in both parishes Alfred’s name is on the memorials of both Bergh Apton and Seething.   He is also remembered in Saskatchewan both on the war memorial in Wadena and in the Honour Roll of Paswegin.

Bligh 1:  Alfred Bligh.

Bligh 2: The Canadian National War Memorial unveiled by King Edward VIII on Vimy Ridge in 1936 that includes the name of Bergh Apton’s Alfred Bligh.

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Bligh 3: The Saskatchewan prairies.  This is Alfred Bligh’s brother Knightly (aka Jack) Bligh harrowing with a four-horse team on his land that was adjacent to the homestead farmed by Alfred Bligh.

Bligh 4:  Alfred was one of nine children born to Walter and Emma Bligh between 1876 and 1894.  This is his sister Ethel Amy, two years his senior.>