Sergeant 200874, 1st/4th Norfolk Regiment
Died 19th April 1917, aged 24
Remembered at Jerusalem Memorial & Haddiscoe
but not in Blakeney
George Haines was born in Blakeney and baptised there 14th August 1892; the son of George Haines of Bale and his wife Dorothy Annie Porter of Cley. He was the second of five children; the eldest two boys being born in Blakeney, then a daughter and two younger sons born in Docking, Downham and Acle, respectively. George Haines senior was a Police Constable, stationed in Haddiscoe during WWI and this is where two of his sons are remembered; Sergeant George Haines on the War Memorial in the churchyard and Rifleman Leonard Haines of the 53rd Bn Rifle Brigade, buried in the churchyard.
There are no Service Records for George, only the briefest of facts that he died in Palestine, having fought in the Egyptian Theatre. Significantly he died on the third day of the second Battle of Gaza when his Battalion made the final push on Gaza from Sheikh Abbas ridge. The scene was described as a “perfect hell of artillery and machine-gun fire” with devastating numbers of casualties, wounded and missing, so much so that the troops were ordered to return back to the starting point under the cover of dark.
His first cousin Clarence Emerson Haines, also a Blakeney born lad, was a casualty of the Great War. He died 27th July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme and is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial as well as in Blakeney.