Edward Gaul
01/03/1915 – 19/08/1945 – aged 31
Edward Gaul was born on the 1st March 1915 in Crumpsall. He arrived at St. Bede’s on the 4th September 1926 and left on the 18th July 1931 at the age of sixteen. After leaving school, Edward made his name as a journalist, becoming an active member of the Manchester Press Exchange, the National Union of Journalists and the Manchester Press Club. He married Helen Fitzgerald on 9th September 1940 at St Ann’s Catholic Church, Crumpsall.
At the outbreak of War, Edward joined up immediately and was assigned to the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC). He was sent with his regiment to France in October 1939 as part of the doomed attempt to halt the German Blitzkrieg. When the evacuation of the British army took place at Dunkirk, Edward was one of those left behind. Finding himself alone in occupied France, Edward endeavoured to round up other stranded soldiers and organise some kind of escape. With Dunkirk and the surrounding area now heavily fortified, he led his band of followers on a three hundred and eighty mile trek. Only travelling at night under the cover of darkness, the band made their way to the port of La Rochelle, where they somehow commandeered a coal barge, which they launched into the Atlantic. After rowing and drifting for three days, they somehow arrived at Newport, South Wales, three weeks after they had been left behind at Dunkirk.
Due to this act of heroism, Edward was promoted to Staff Sergeant and, after a brief period of recuperation, returned to active service. He was sent to rejoin his unit in the Middle East, forming part of the force defending Egypt. Whilst there, in December 1943, he received the award of the Certificate of Appreciation for devotion to Duty and Good Service. In late July 1945, Edward developed a serious tropical fever and was struck off sick: he was sent to the Fifteenth Scottish Hospital in Cairo, where the doctors battled to diagnose and treat his illness. However, they were unsuccessful and he developed bronchial pneumonia from which he died on the 19th August. Edward was thirty-one years old.
