"...Or Whether The Wound Was Self-Inflicted"

On the 30th May 1915, the War Diary for the 2nd Battalion - then in billets at Brielen in the rear of the front line near Ypres, carried a sober annotation: "Private Garrod was shot by accident. How it happened is unknown or whether the wound was self-inflicted."
A Suffolk man, Ardley Charles Garrod was born at Tunstall just north of Woodbridge. He had enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment in September 1914 and had been posted to the 3rd battalion being issued the No. 3/9091. He would have most probably landed with the Battalion in January 1915 and would have been in the front line during the Battalion's toughest times.
Had the actions at Frezenberg and Bellewarde caused his nerve to crack? had he tried to get himself that "Blighty" wound that would get him sent home for good? or had he been the tragic accident of a comrades nervousness? For whatever reason, the wound such as it was, was fatal and Garrod died of his injuries the following day. Self inflicted or not, Garrod paid the highest price.
Like Major Maycock, he was originally buried in the small "Burgomaster" or "Machine Gun Farm" cemetery where luckily, his original cross survived the war (unlike Maycock's) and he was reinterred in the larger "Ypres Reservoir" cemetery after the war.

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