Arthur Reginald Heard was born in 1887, the youngest son to Herbert and Emily. Herbert was a local surveyor and land agent, and the family lived in the middle of Shepton Mallet in Somerset, two doors up from the town’s Baptist Church and within sight of the Magistrate’s Court.
In 1908, aged 21, Arthur made the journey across the Atlantic to Argentina, settling in Buenos Aires and working for the Pacific Railway Company. When war broke out, however, he immediately returned to England, when he enlisted in the army, and was assigned to the Royal Engineers.
Sapper Heard was shipped out to France and was quickly promoted, first to Corporal, then to Serjeant. In November 1917, Arthur was caught up in a shell impact on the front, and was buried. He was quickly dug out, and not severely hurt.
On 25th March 1918, Serjeant Heard was due to return home on leave, but was taken ill. Back in England, he was hospitalised in Birmingham, where meningitis was confirmed. He seemed to recover – even going out for tea with his sister-in-law when she visited him – and was transferred to recuperate in Saltash, Cornwall.
Within days of arriving, he collapsed with a fit, and passed away within half an hour. Subsequent examination confirmed that Arthur had died from a brain tumour. He was just 30 years old.
Arthur Reginald Heard lies at rest in the cemetery of his home town, Shepton Mallet.
Harry Kick was born in August 1900, the oldest of six children to George and Georgina Kick from the small village of Middlezoy in Somerset. George was an agricultural labourer, while his wife helped with the dairy side of Jones Farm, where he worked.
Details of Harry’s military service are scarce, but, based on his age, it is likely to have been the second half of the war when he enlisted. He joined the Royal Navy and was assigned to HMS Osea, a naval base in Essex.
Sadly, there is little evidence of Harry’s time in the navy. His pension records confirm that he passed away on 17th September 1918, having been suffering from pneumonia. He was just 18 years old when he died.
Harry Kick lies at peace in the churchyard of Holy Cross Church in his home village of Middlezoy, Somerset.
George Henry Palmer is one of those names that has been a challenge to research and who risked being lost to time.
George and Henry are common names for the late Victorian era, so a simple search on Ancestry brought up too many options to confirm anything specific.
Given the ornate nature of his headstone, it seemed reasonable that his passing and funeral would have been recorded in contemporary media, and indeed it was; the only identifiable name was his own. (His parents “WR and A Palmer” and featured, as is his grandfather “Rev. J Palmer”, but, again, this is not enough to go on for research.)
The additional name on the gravestone, however – George’s brother Albert – proved to be the key, though, identifying the following.
George Henry Palmer was born in May 1896, one of five children to William Richard Palmer and his wife Amy. William was a chemist’s assistant, a job that seemed to move him around the country. William was born in Wells, Somerset, as was his wife and eldest son; George was born in Regents Park, London, while Albert, who was a year younger, was born back in Wells. By the time of the 1901 census (when George was 4 and Albert 3), the family were living in Leicester, and they remained so for the next ten years.
Details of George’s military service comes primarily from the newspaper report of his funeral:
Deceased… was discharged from the Army through wounds received at Ypres in February, 1916, and had resumed his studies at Oxford and entered on a course of forestry, which he was following with great success.
He was well known in Wells, having spent a considerable time in the city and vicinity. He took a great interest in the Wells Volunteers, and was able to drill them in true Army style, having received his training in the Artist Rifles, and later gained his commission in the Rifle Brigade, where he was spoken highly of by his brother officers and men.
Mr Palmer was most thorough and painstaking in all his duties and studies. He was a Wyggestine [sic] scholar at the age of ten years in open competition, and later senior scholar at Wadham College Oxford.
Wells Journal: Friday 1st November 1918.
Second Lieutenant Palmer contracted pneumonia while up at Oxford, succumbing to the illness on 28th October 1918, just a fortnight before the end of the war. He was 22 years of age.
George Henry Palmer lies at rest in the cemetery of his home city of Wells.
Harry George King was born in Somerset in December 1894, one of nine children to John and Sarah King. John worked as a cabinet maker in Wells, and Harry followed in a similar vein to his father, becoming an upholsterer.
When war broke out, Harry – who stood at 5’3″ (1.6m) tall – enlisted in the Royal Navy as a Cook’s Mate. He trained on HMS Victory I in Portsmouth, before transferring to the HMV Vernon, a land-based ship, also in Portsmouth.
While on leave in 1917, Harry married Alice Trickey, who had also been born in Wells.
Harry’s first sea-going assignment was on the HMS Hermione, which was a guard ship off the Southampton coast. After two years on board, Cook’s Mate King was transferred to another vessel.
The HMS Glatton was a monitor vessel requisitioned by the Royal Navy from the Norwegian fleet at the outbreak of the First World War. After a lengthy refit, she was finally ready for service in the autumn of 1918, and positioned in Dover in preparation for a future offensive across the Channel.
At 6:15 on the evening of 16 September, there was a small explosion in a 6-inch magazine below decks, which then ignited the cordite stored there. Flames shot through the roof of one of the turrets and started to spread. The fire was not able to be brought under control, and there were concerns that, if the ship’s rear magazine exploded, the presence of the ammunition ship Gransha only 150 yards (140 m) away risked a massive explosion that would devastate Dover itself. The decision was taken to torpedo the Glatton, in the hope that the incoming flood water would quash the fire.
In the event, sixty men aboard the Glatton were killed outright, with another 124 men injured, of whom 19 died later of their injuries. This included Cook’s Mate King.
While the incident wasn’t reported in the media of the time, Harry’s funeral was; it gives a little more insight into the tragedy.
News reached Wells… that 1st Class Cook’s Mate Harry George King… was lying in a hospital at Dover suffering from severe burns caused through an internal explosion on the ship on which he was serving. His wife (…to whom he was married 12 months ago) and his sister at once proceeded to the hospital, where they arrived only a few minutes before he died.
The unfortunate young man had sustained shocking injuries and was conscious for only two hours on Friday. He lost all his belongings in the explosion.
Wells Journal: Friday 27th September 1918.
Harry George King was only 27 years old when he died. He lies at rest in Wells Cemetery, Somerset.
Harry’s widow, Alice, did not remarry; the couple had not had any children, and she passed away in their home town of Wells, in January 1974.
Albert Charles West was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, in 1870. The second of nine children, his father Charles was in the army, while his mother Hannah is listed on the 1871 census as a “Soldier’s Wife”.
By the time of the next census, ten years later, Charles had relocated the family to Wells in Somerset – Charles had been born just up the road in Shepton Mallet, so, in effect, he was bringing his family home. By this point, the Wests were a family of seven; Albert had an older sister, Eliza, and three younger siblings, Mary, Joseph and Earnest.
Albert seemed keen to make his own way in the world; by the 1891 census, he had relocated again, this time to South Wales, where he worked as a minor. He boarded with a grocer in the village of Llantwit Fardre. It would have been a bustling house, because Albert was living there with the grocer, his wife and four children and three other lodgers.
The following year, Albert enlisted in the 2nd Battalion Welsh Regiment. Posted to India, he served there for ten of his twelve years’ service.
After completing his enlistment, Albert moved back to Somerset and married Emily Sparrow in Wells. The couple moved back to South Wales for work, however, this time with Albert working in a mine in Llanwonno, ten miles up further up the Taff Valley from Llantwit Fardre.
When war broke out, Albert re-enlisted, this time joining the South Wales Borderers. Sadly, little documentation of his second time in the army remains. He is recorded as having served in the 51st (Graduating) Battalion, which was a training unit based in Suffolk; presumably his experience made him ideal to train others and enabled him to take the rank of Serjeant.
There is nothing to confirm how Serjeant West died. All that is know is that he passed on 9th July 1918. The lack of any media reports around his funeral suggests it is likely to have been illness, rather than injury, that took him. He was 48 years old.
Albert Charles West lies at rest in Wells Cemetery in Somerset.
Charles and Hannah had nine children in total. Two years before Albert passed, their youngest son – Alfred Augustus West – died suddenly and unexpectedly. Records confirm that he was working on the lines at Wells Railway Station, when his foot got caught in the points. Unable to free himself, he was hit by a train and killed.
One of the things I have found during this research is that occasionally a mystery will come to light. In the case of the gravestone in the Somerset village of Coxley – nestled on the main road between Wells and Glastonbury – it was the very identity of a person buried there that threw me.
The headstone in question simply says “WG Collins served as Private G Clark in the Army Veterinary Corps”, but the research tools I normally use drew blanks.
Unfortunately, the Findagrave website does not have the burial listed under either name, so that too was a dead end.
The British Newspaper Archives site – a record of media across the UK covering 250 years – similarly has no entry for either name around the time of his death, which suggests it was either not ‘out of the ordinary’ (not headline-grabbing) or his death and funeral were just not submitted to the local paper.
Fold3 – which stores military records – has a record for 9978 Private Geoffrey Clark. The Register of Soldiers’ Effects confirms that a war gratuity was awarded to his sister, Ada Jane Waldron, after his death.
And, as it turns out, it was Ada who proved the key to the mystery of her brother. Working on the basis that Ada’s maiden name was Collins, I used Ancestry.co.uk to try and track her down. The site presented a family tree featuring both an Ada Jane Collins and, more importantly, a William George Collins, and the game was afoot…
William George Collins was born in the Somerset village of Coxley in the summer of 1889. He was the youngest of seven children – Ada was his oldest sister – to James Collins, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Jane.
Following the death of his mother in 1901, and his father a decade later, it’s evident that William wanted to make his way in the world. By the 1911 census, he had moved to Wales, working as an attendant at the Glamorgan County Lunatic Asylum. The asylum, which was in Bridgend, South Wales, was home to nearly 900 patients, and William acted as one of the 120 staff looking after them.
War was on the horizon, however, and the mystery surrounding William returned once more. Military records for William (or Geoffrey) are limited; he enlisted in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in the summer of 1915 and was shipped to France in September of that year.
There is no record why he enlisted under the name Geoffrey Clark, nor does there seem to be any evidence of either names in his family. As to his passing, there is nothing to give a hint to how he died. All that can be confirmed for certain is that he passed away at the University War Hospital in Southampton on 25th October 1918, at the age of 32.
William’s probate records give his address as Railway Terrace in Blaengarw and show that his effects went to his sister, Ada.
William George Collins – also known as Geoffrey Clark – lies at peace in the graveyard of Christ Church, in his home village of Coxley.
Charles Curtis was born in Wells, Somerset, in January 1894, one of fifteen children to Charles and Mary Jane Curtis. Charles Sr worked as a gardener in the Wells area, and, after leaving school, Charles Jr started work as a mill hand for the local paper mill (this would have been either St Cuthbert’s Mill in Wells, or the Wookey Hole Mill in the nearby village).
Charles enlisted in October 1915, joining the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was posted to France a month later and, while specifics of his military service are not readily apparent, Private Curtis was awarded the Victory Medal, the British Medal and the 1915 Star.
Charles was admitted to hospital on 1st November 1917 with an inflamed cervical gland (reported as Trench Fever), for which he underwent an operation. He remained hospitalised at Whalley Range for more than two months, and was passed for active service, having apparently recovered.
Private Curtis was suddenly taken ill again on 1st July, and his family telegrammed. His mother and one of his sisters boarded a train for the hospital – again in Whalley – but they had not gone far when word came that he succumbed to rheumatic fever. He was 24 years old.
Charles Curtis Jr lies at rest in the graveyard of St Matthew’s Church in the village of Wookey, Somerset.
A newspaper report of his funeral confirms that Charles was one of five brothers who had entered military service during the Great War. Amazingly, given that seven of the brothers ended up serving, Charles was the only one to die as a result of the war.
Joseph Wilkinson was born in the village of Greystoke, Cumbria in the summer of 1888. His parents were John and Margaret Wilkinson, and he had two siblings, also called John and Margaret. Joseph’s father worked as a railway signalman, and the industry employed a large number of people in the village.
Joseph’s life was to take a different turn, however, and it was likely the railway that took him there. He next appears on the 1911 census, boarding in a house in the village of Wedmore in Somerset. At 23 years old, he is listed as a Solicitor’s Cashier.
As with so many other fallen men and women, Joseph’s trail goes cold. There is not enough evidence to detail his military career – he joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a Driver and was promoted to Sergeant.
The UK Army Register of Soldiers’ Effects show that he was married to a woman called Ethel, although there are no records of their wedding. The document also confirms that he died at the Union Hospital in Winchester, Hampshire on 17th October 1918, but there is no cause of death given. He was 31 years old.
“He did his duty” says his impressive gravestone, but it is tragic that that duty is lost to time.
Sergeant Joseph Wilkinson lies at rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s in Wedmore, the Somerset village that came to be his home.
Thomas James Buckley Fowler – known as James – was born in 1872, the eldest of eleven children to Tom and Ellen Fowler.
Much of his early life is lost to time, but we do know that James married Emily Ann Gregory on December 26th 1898, and the couple went on to have four children – Wilfred, Harold, Violet and Ivy.
On his marriage certificate James lists himself as a shoemaker and, given the family were living in the Somerset town of Street, it is likely that he was employed at the Clark’s factory there. By 1911, however, the family had moved to Glamorgan, where he had taken work as a timber man in the coal mine in the village of Nelson.
Private Fowler enlisted when war broke out, joining the 10th Battalion of the Welch Regiment in October 1914. During his time with the regiment, he was promoted, first to Lance Corporal and then to Acting Sergeant.
He transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps just under a year later. In November 1915, he was admitted to hospital with enteritis, which led to him being shipped back to England for treatment.
Once he had recovered, Private Fowler was enlisted in the Provisional Company of the RAMC, transferring again to the 7th Company in 1916. He then operated on home soil for the next few years.
James was admitted to the Royal Military Hospital in Bristol on 28th October 1918 with influenza and bronchial pneumonia. He sadly passed away a few days later, on 2nd November 1918. He was 46 years old.
James Fowler lies at rest in the cemetery in Street, Somerset.
Henry Leslie Boyce was born on 14th June 1872 in the parish of St Michael, in Barbados, then the British West Indies. His parents were Samuel and Mary Boyce.
Further details of his early life are scant, but Henry appears to have moved to England at some point in the early 1890s. The 1911 census shows him living in Ilford, Essex, and working as an iron and metal merchant. His wife Rosanna, a dressmaker, was born in Wincanton, Somerset, and they married in 1896. The young couple had two children; sadly they both died young.
Henry was quick to do his duty when war broke out, joining up in September 1914. He enlisted in the British West Indies Regiment, and after training on the home front, served in France from April 1917. While there, he was promoted to Acting Corporal, but contracted bronchial pneumonia and was sent back to England to recuperate after only five months.
A medical report from November 1917 states that Acting Corporal Boyce remained unfit for military service, and he was discharged from the army at the end of that year. The same report showed him as a former commercial traveller, living in Forest Gate. It marks him as having a very good military character – “Judging from his records, he is a steady, sober, well-conducted man“.
While no information after that point is available for him, it seems that he succumbed to the disease less than a year later.
Henry Leslie Boyce died on 24th October 1918. He was 46 years old.
He lies at rest in the graveyard of St Leonard’s Church in Butleigh, Somerset; presumably close to his widow’s family.
There is some discrepancy over Henry’s rank. He was discharged with the rank of Acting Corporal, although his headstone cites his previous rank of Private.
Death and Service 