Samuel McCall
Killed In Action
1st July 1916
Belfast Telegraph In Memorium 1917
McCall - A tribute of love and respect to the memory of our darling son, Private Samuel McCall, who was killed in France on 1st July 1916.
“Weep not, dear mother, and be content
For I to thee was only lent;
The Lord has only had His due,
An very soon He may call you.
So in our grief we murmur,
But faith sings a glader song,
And shows us the way you went on that day
Was bright with the angel throng.”
The Only Child Left…
Samuel McCall was born in Belfast in 1896 to foreman bricklayer William Alexander McCall and Elizabeth Kerr who were married in Ballygowan in 1892. In 1901, the family lived in Rhyll in Wales and by 1911 they had made their home on York Road, Belfast. Samuel was the only child, his two siblings having previously died.
By 1916 the family were living in Gainsborough Drive, Belfast. Samuel worked as an advertising clerk with the Belfast Evening Telegraph and enlisted with the 14th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles on 4 October 1915.
He died on 1 July 1916, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, at the age of 19 and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, France.