Ashford Herbert Burrough was born to William Herbert and Emma Burrough, in Palmerston Ontario. He served with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles during the Second World War.
Burrough was lost to an accident in the Netherlands on December 12, 1944, when the vehicle he was a passenger in lost control and slid down an embankment. Burrough, along along with six other men, were killed in the accident. A court report following the incident notes that:
“The carrier was proceeding in a south-easterly direction from the junction at MR 718627 along the road immediately north of the dyke. When it had made a slight bend to the left it tracked to the left side of the road and the left track ran onto the verge. The driver turned the wheel as far as possible to the right, but due to the soft verge was unable to bring the vehicle back on the road. The carrier proceeded to a point where the verge was only one foot wide and there was practically a vertical drop of two and a half feet into the ditch. The left side dropped so rapidly that the carrier overturned into the ditch which contained between three and six feet of water. From the time the carrier first entered the verge until it overturned, the officer and five ORs managed to jump clear. The remaining seven men were pinned beneath the overturned carrier below the surface of the water.”
Burrough was buried in the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetary, in the Netherlands. You can view his Commonwealth Graves Commission page here.
References
- “A WWII Memorial Group to a Native Canadian” eMedals Militaria & Historica. n.d. Web. 18 Jun 2014.
