Frederick married Gladys A Osmond in the July quarter 1913, and they lived in 14, Chargot Road,
Pencisely, Cardiff. Their daughter, Dorren Gibbon, was born in the September quarter of 1916.
Frederick enlisted with 1st Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers. On the 4th August 1914, they were
stationed at Portsmouth. As part of the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Division, on the 14th August they
were mobilised for war and land ed in Le Havre as part of the British Expeditionary Force and
engaged in various action of the Western Front in 1914 including;
The Battle of Mons and subsequent retreat; the Battle of Le Cateau; the Battle of the Marne: the
Battle of the Aisne: the battles of La Bassee and Messines 1914; First Battle of Ypres 1915; The
Battle of Albert and, in fact, all the major battles throughout the War.
The British Expeditionary Force is often used to refer only to the forces present in France prior to
the end of the First Battle of Ypres on 22nd November 1914. By the end of 1914 – after the batttles
Mons and the other great battles – the old Regular Army had been wiped out, althought it managed
to help stop the German advance. An alternative end point of the BEF was 26th December 1914
when it was divided into the First & Second Armies (A Third, Fourth and Fifth being created later
in the war) BEF remained the official name of the British Armies in France and Flanders
throughout the First World War.
Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, who was famously dismissive of the BEF, allegedly issued an
order on 19th August 1914, to “exterminate .....the treacherous English and walk over General
French’s contemptible little army” Hence, in later years, the survivors of the regular army dubbed
themselves “The Old Contemptibles” No evidence of any such order being issued by the Kaiser has
ever been found.
When the First World War broke out in August 1914, The Northumberland Fusiliers, a fusilier
infantry regiment of the British Army consisted of 7 battalions eventually expanding to 52
battalions although not all existed at the same time, of which 29 served overseas. It was the second
largest infantry regiment of the British Army during WW1 surpassed only by the 88 battalions of
the London regiment. The Northumberland Fusiliers earned 67 battle honours and was awarded five
Victoria Crosses but at the cost of over 16,000 soldiers killed in action, and many thousands
wounded. The Norumberland Fusiliers mostly saw action in the main theatre of war, engaged in
static trench warfare on the Western Front in Belgium and France, but also participated in fighting
on the Macedonian front, the Gallipoli Campaign, the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Italian
Front.