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Sgt. Arthur Goodman
British Army Machine Gun Corps
from:Maidstone
Arthur Goodman, my grandfather, was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire on 2 Aug 1892 to his parents William Goodman and Alice (nee Lea). He had two older brothers, Fred and Frank and two younger sisters Alma and Gladys. Presumably life was quiet for him and his family and he worked as an assistant boot salesman while the family lived at 16 Clifford Street. As far as I understand it at the outbreak of war he joined the King's Shropshire Light Infantry but them went on to join the Machine Gun Corps.
My father (William Edward Goodman) wrote of him: "Dad was a native of Shrewsbury, where he had commenced work as an assistant in that branch of boot and shoe retailers, G & W Morton, for whom he worked throughout the whole of his working life, except for Army service during the First World War. My father's army service was with the Machine Gun Corps, rising to the rank of Sergeant Major. The M.G.C. appears to have been something of a suicide squad in that they were to the fore in major actions, or bearing the brunt of spirited offensives against our lines. Whilst a Sergeant he received the congratulations of Major General C.E. Pereira, CB,CMG, Commanding 2nd Division on his "Splendid leadership and example to those under him.""
After the war he married my grandmother, Lavinia Barfoot, and had two boys my father and his younger brother, Ronald Clive. He died in Maidstone on in 1958.
