2/6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
Ernest Jonah Pass was born at Birtles in Cheshire, in the spring of 1897. He was the son of Simon and Mary Pass, whom the 1911 Census records as having twelve children, all but one having survived up to that year.
In 1901 the family was living in Ruabon, near Wrexham in Denbighshire but by the time of the census ten years later their home was at Little London, Lechlade in Gloucestershire.
According to ‘Leaving All that was Dear – Cheltenham and the Great War’ by Joe Devereux and Graham Sacker, Private Pass enlisted in the Army in the week commencing 18 October 1915 and was reported wounded on 20 October 1917.
He joined the 2/5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment and acquired the number 5472 and later became attached to the 2/6th Battalion. Both these were Territorial Force units and subject to re-numbering in 1917, when Private Pass was given 241524.
The website www.remembering.org.uk gives details of those who have a Cheltenham connection but are not commemorated in the town. It quotes from an article in the Gloucestershire Echo of 5 December 1918 which states that Private Pass was a returned Prisoner of War, having been taken by the Germans in the Cambrai area in December 1917.
Evidently Private Pass had lived at one time at Delholme Cottage, High Street, Prestbury.
Prisoner of War records released by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) in 2014 confirm that Ernest Jonah Pass was captured at Manieres, south of Cambrai, on 4 December 1917, possibly suffering from shrapnel wounds and was interned at Minden and then Sagan.
He was part of a consignment of British PoWs repatriated via Hull on 27 November 1918.
In the early months of 1917 Ernest Pass had married Julia Elizabeth H Cole at Cheltenham.
Her name appears as Elizabeth Pass, in the Commonwealth War Grave Commission Register as living at Ivy Cottage, Mill Lane Prestbury.
Ernest Pass died of unknown causes at Cheltenham on 3 March 1919, aged 22.
He is buried in Cheltenham Cemetery, where a CWGC headstone marks his grave. His name is not present on the Cheltenham Borough War Memorial but is listed on the Lechlade (St Lawrence Church) Roll of Honour.
Researched by Graham Adams 3 November 2014 (revised)