9th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers (British Army)
Date Of Birth:
11/05/1898
Died:
01/07/1916 (Killed in Action)
Age:
18
Summary
James Cumberland was the son of William John and Mary Cumberland. He was born 11th May 1898 in the Benburb area. His father had been an army man, serving for seventeen years. He was one of ten children. James was a member of the Derrygortreavy Company of the Dungannon UVF and also Kilnacart Orange Lodge No. 295. Both James and his brother John joined the 9th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on the same day. They have consecutive service numbers – James was 11554, John was 11553. Private James Cumberland arrived in France on 5th October 1915. Private James Cumberland and his brother John were killed in the first hours of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916.
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"
