48969, Battery Sergeant Major Alfred Arthur GOOCH MC, Royal Field Artillery

He was born on 17th December 1884 and in 1911 was living with his parents in Wix, Essex. He was working as a gardener.
Alfred Arthur Gooch married Gertrude Ellen Francis* in Bramford on the 8th June 1912. According to the Parish Register they were both resident in the village but there is no indication that he was a soldier at the time. In 1911 Gertrude was a widow, living in The Street, with her only child Dorothy. Gertrude’s maiden name was Keeble and she had married Herbert Francis in 1905. Herbert died age 33 in 1910.
Gertrude was the sister of Charles William Keeble who, coincidentally, was also a Battery Sergeant Major in the Royal Garrison Artillery.
Alfred crossed to France on the 30th May 1915. The award was published in the London Gazette on 3rd June 1918.

In 1939 the couple was living in The Street and Alfred worked as a Quarry Foreman at a cement works – no doubt this would have been at Great Blakenham (the former Blue Circle Cement works).
He died in Ipswich in 1971.