Private Jakob ('Jacob') Gotz was a German-born soldier of the British Army who died during the First World War.
He was born in Sobernheim, and settled in England by the early 1900s. He married Emma Smith in 1905, and at the time of the 1911 Census was working as a baker while living on Rowallan Road, London.
Gotz was posted to the 30th Battalion, The Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regiment). The 30th was one of two labour battalions that were predominantly composed of men classified as 'enemy aliens', earning these units the disparaging sobriquet 'The Kaiser's Own'.[1] Aged 30, he was killed instantly in road accident on 13 February 1918.[2] Jacob had cycled from Reading to Fulham for his son Henry's eighth birthday and on the way back he met with a tragic accident. I occurred on Shepherd’s Hill, the hill which runs up out of Reading. Jacob was riding a bicycle behind a motor van on the near side going down hill. He was hanging on with the right hand and changing over to the right side of the van, he tried to catch it with his left hand. As he was passing over to the offside of the van for this purpose, he ran into a motor bus which was going up the hill, with the consequence that he became pinned between the two vehicles, his head was smashed and his neck broken. He is buried in Reading Cemetery.
Notes
References
- Ancestry.co.uk.
- Gotz, Jacob, cwgc.org. Retrieved 23 October 2015.