9th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (British Army)
Date Of Birth:
18/11/1885
Died:
01/07/1916 (Killed in Action)
Age:
30
Summary
Absalom Keightley was the eldest son of James Keightley. Absalom was born about 1886 in Coalisland, County Tyrone. His mother died when he was young and the family (three sons) moved to Belfast. Private Absalom Keighley was serving with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers when he was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916. He was 30 years old.
The Thiepval Memorial will be found on the D73, next to the village of Thiepval, off the main Bapaume to Albert road (D929). Each year a major ceremony is held at the memorial on 1 July. The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme is a war memorial to 72,337 missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. It is near the village of Thiepval, Picardy in France. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Thiepval has been described as "the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the twentieth century"
