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gallant ofcer has since been killed in action.”
Having survived some of the ercest ghting of the war, Harold nally lost
his life on the 11 August 1917 due to a sniper while in a shell hole in
the Jargon Trench area on the western edge of Glencorse Wood, Ypres.
His second in command Private Albert Scriven wrote to Ackroyd’s widow
describing what happened:
“I was acting orderly corporal and on hearing the news I took a party of
stretcher bearers but on arrival found he was dead. There were six other
poor fellows in the same shell hole who met the same fate, it was a perfect
death trap. He was visiting each company about 150 yds ahead of us to
see if there were any wounded to attend to and was shot in the head by a
sniper.”
Captain Ackroyd’s posthumous VC was presented to his widow Mabel by
George V at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on September 26, 1917.
There were numerous tributes to Captain Ackroyd’s gallantry from
comrades. Captain JN Richardson, one of his closest friends, wrote to his
widow describing him as “the biggest loss the battalion has ever suffered…
In all ghts he was worth a hundred men to us for morale’s sake.”To his
commanding ofer, Lieutenant-Colonel BE Clay, he was “the most gallant
man I have ever met”. and the younger soldiers from his battallion were
inspired by his feats of heroism as he repeatedly risked and eventually
lost his life to save them. Harold’s exact burial location is not known and