GUESS S.W Private 5135 Sydney William GUESS. “A” Company, 1st Battalion, The Queen’s (Royal West Kent Regiment). Died Thursday 21st December 1916 aged 19 years. Son of Henry and Lucy Guess of Robscot, Bethersden, near Ashford, Kent. Buried in the Gorre British and Indian Cemetery, Gorre, France. Grave reference III.D.16. From 1st October 1916 until March 1917 the 1st West Kent’s were in the vicinity of Givenchy and Festubert. On 19th December the enemy indulged itself in a sudden artillery bombardment. This inflicted 12 casualties on the battalion (one of whom appears to have been poor Sydney). The rest of December past without incident. Gorre is a hamlet 2.5 kilometres north of Beuvry, and 4 kilometres east of Bethune. Leave Beuvry on the D72, crossing the railway and then the Canal d'Aire on the way. The Cemetery is 150 metres from the church in Gorre, to the left of the D72 (Rue de Festubert). Historical Information: The chateau at Gorre was occupied early in the war by troops from the United Kingdom and India and the cemeteries, in the south-east corner of the chateau grounds, were begun in the autumn of 1914. The Indian part of the cemetery was closed in October 1915, when the Indian Corps left France. The cemetery was used by units holding the sector until April 1918, when, in the Battles of the Lys, Gorre became a support post close behind the front line. The 55th (West Lancashire) Division, which held this front before and during the German attack, buried many of their dead in Plots V and VI. A few graves were brought into the cemetery later from near Gorre and from Mesplaux Farm, near Locon. There are now 934 Commonwealth casualties of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 41 of the burials are unidentified and there are special memorials to four servicemen whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. The cemetery also contains nine war graves of other nationalities, most of them German. The cemetery was designed by Charles Holden.