4474 Private Frank Golding, 23rd London Regiment
Connection: Victory Medal.
I was the high bidder on Frank Golding's eBay-listed Victory Medal in February 2022, and at the time of writing he remains my only connection to 28 July 1916.
Frank Golding was born at Fulham on the 6th October 1896, the son of George and Eliza Golding and one of at least 12 children born to George and Eliza. On the 1911 census he's the youngest member of the family, aged 15, living with his parents and two older brothers, and still at school.
Frank originally attested for service on the 22nd April 1915, joining the Devonshire Regiment with the regimental number 16388. Six days later, however, he was discharged as "not being likely to become an efficient soldier", this probably as a result of "very slight varicocele" and "slight varix [varicose vein] in right leg". Undeterred, Frank enlisted for a second time, signing up with the 23rd (County of London) Battalion, the London Regiment, at St John's Hill on the 17th June 1915. Just over a year later, on the 25th June 1916, he arrived in France, and just over a month after that, he received a gunshot wound to his buttock and back. By the 5th August 1916 he was back in Blighty where he would spend 48 days at the 5th Southern General Hospital in Portsmouth and a further 77 days at Fairfield Court Hospital in Eastbourne.
Frank remained in England until January 1917 when he returned to France, remaining there for a little over six months before he was wounded for a second time, on this occasion receiving a gunshort wound to his abdomen (7th June 1917). Sent to a hospital in France, he returned to England on the 2nd July 1917 and never went back.
Apart from a brief stint with the 1/21st London Regiment from August 1918, and his ill-fated six days with the Devonshire Regiment in 1915, Frank spent all of his time with the 23rd London Regiment. In March 1921 he wrote to the Infantry Records Office, stating:
"Reading the News of the World on Sunday last, I see that there is a very large number of medals [unclear] I myself joined on the 17th day of June 1915, went overseas twice, and got discharged on the 13th September 1918 and I have not received any medal yet. By the aid of my medal I might be able to get a living, being as I am out of work. Yours sincerely, Mr F Golding."
As the 1921 census shows, Frank was working by June 1921, his trade given as "Costermonger (Greengrocer)" and by the time the 1939 Register was taken, he was employed in Fulham as a greengrocer's salesman. Frank Golding died in 1965, his death registered at Chelsea.
