Reginald George Goffin

Reginald George Goffin was born on 15th May 1895 at Toddington, Bedfordshire, the son of Benjamin Goffin and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Durrant. The family later moved to Hambledon where his father kept a drapers and grocers shop at Commerce House in East Street. He spent his early childhood in the village before the family sought new opportunities overseas.

In August 1910 they emigrated to Canada, sailing from Liverpool to Quebec. From there they travelled across the country to New Westminster in British Columbia and settled nearby at Maple Ridge, where the family took up farming. By the time of the 1911 Canadian census Reginald, still in his mid teens, was already working as farm help alongside his father and brothers, growing into adulthood in a very different landscape from the Hampshire countryside of his childhood.

When war came he enlisted in December 1914 in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, joining the 29th Battalion of the British Columbia Regiment. Over the following years he served on the Western Front and rose through the ranks, eventually being commissioned as a Lieutenant in D Company, a notable achievement for a young emigrant soldier.

In the summer of 1918 the Allies launched a major advance that became known as the Hundred Days Offensive. On the afternoon of 9th August 1918, during fighting around the village of Rosieres in France, his company advanced through the town against determined resistance. After reaching the far side of the objective he was struck by a rifle bullet to the neck and killed instantly at the age of twenty three.

He was buried at Rosieres Communal Cemetery Extension in the Somme. Although he fell in Canadian service, he is remembered in both the community he left and the one he helped build – commemorated on the Hambledon War Memorial in Hampshire and also on the memorial at Maple Ridge in British Columbia.