Pte Gerald Noel Lovell, 31617, 1st Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, was killed in action in Flanders on October 9th*, 1917, according to military records.

He had enlisted in the Bedfords in November 1916 and was drafted to the Front the following April. His death came when a shell burst near him, also wounding two comrades.

The son of John and Louisa Lovell, of 315 Hitchin Road, he had married straw hat finisher Olive Woodward early in 1916. At the time of Gerald's death she was living at the home of her parents Arthur and Helen at 12 Langley Road [now Latimer Road]. In the 1911 Census Gerald was described as a 15-year-old straw hat warehouseman living with his family at 79 Clarendon Road.

[*Family announcements at the time dated Gerald's death as having occurred on October 3rd, 1917]

Gerald's brother Percy 'Punch' Lovell, who had gained promotion to sergeant during 2½ years on the battlefields of France and Flanders, had returned to England a few months earlier to become a machine gun instructor. At the time of Gerald's death the former Clarence FC centre-forward was on his way to the United States as one of 100 men - the only one from Luton - chosen to initiate American troops into the methods of warfare in France, following the entry of the United States into the war.