Stanley James Southwood was born in 1896, the oldest of six children to John and Florence Southwood from Bridgwater, Somerset. John was a labourer and ship’s mate, while Stanley, who was the only boy in the family, started work loading barrows in a brickyard.
Military life was pulling Stanley, however. According to another researcher, he enlisted in the Special Reserves of the Somerset Light Infantry in October 1912. Six months later he joined the regular army, and was there when the war began.
While I have not been able to corroborate this information, it appears that Southwood was reported missing on 11th September 1915, after being wounded in the chest. He was taken prisoner of war, and, while being held, he developed tuberculosis in both lungs.
After his release (no documents confirm when this was) he was discharged from the army as medically fit to continue. He was in a military hospital at the time – the beginning of November 1918 – suffering from tuberculosis, which had been exacerbated by the chest wound he had received three years earlier. At the time he was discharged, he had the rank of Lance Corporal.
Sadly, it seems that Stanley never fully recovered from his wartime experience. He died on 8th September 1919 from consumption (tuberculosis), aged just 23 years old.
Stanley James Southwood lies at rest in the Wembdon Road Cemetery in his home town of Bridgwater in Somerset.
Thomas George Edward Humphries was born in November 1897, one of six children to George and Annie Humphries, from North Wootton in Somerset. George was a farm labourer, and had been married to his wife for 19 years before her untimely death in at the age of 40.
When war came, Thomas was just 16 years old. He enlisted quickly, though, joining the Royal Horse Artillery as early as the summer of 1915. Driver Humphries joined the 120 Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, which was one of the many Howitzer brigades moving the large long-barrelled field guns along the front line.
Given the high use of horses during the way, and that Thomas was a Driver, it is likely that his role would have been guiding the animals in his care – this may also account for why his gravestone gives his troop as the Royal Horse Artillery.
Little remains of Thomas’ service records; he was awarded the Victory and British Medals and well as the 1915 Star, so would have been in the thick of the fighting and seen action on the Western Front.
When it comes to his passing, again details are scant. His pension records simply state that he died of ‘disease’, and he passed in the military hospital in Southwark, South London. Again, given when he died and the lack of any contemporary media report on his passing, it seems likely that the cause was a lung condition – influenza, pneumonia or tuberculosis – but that is a presumption on my part,
Whatever the cause, Driver Humphries died on 8th April 1919, aged just 21 years old.
Thomas George Edward Humphries lies at rest in the quiet graveyard of St Peter’s Church in his home village of North Wootton.
Sydney Gillard was born in October 1888, one of eight children to Charles and Lily. Charles was a stonemason, and this is the trade that Sydney and his older brother Harry also followed.
When war broke out, he enlisted in the Gloucestershire Regiment; Private Gillard’s troop, the 1/4th (City of Bristol) Battalion, were initially based in Swindon, before moving to Maldon in Essex. They were posted to France in March 1915, eventually being shipped to Italy in November 1917.
While Sydney’s military records do not confirm when he enlisted or where he served, that he saw fighting is beyond any doubt because his war pension records confirm that he died from his wounds.
Sydney Gillard passed away on 23rd January 1919, at the age of 31. He lies at rest in the cemetery of his home village of Othery, Somerset.
Ossian Emanuel Richards was born in Westonzoyland, Somerset, in December 1897. He was the youngest of two children and his parents – Emmanuel and Jane – were farmers in the area.
Ossian enlisted later in the war, joining the RAF in June 1918. While little detail of his service is available, he had been a fitter before joining up, so it may well have been on the mechanical side of things that he was involved.
After nine months’ service, Ossian has been promoted to Corporal, and, with the war over, he was transferred to the RAF Reserves in March 1919.
Sadly, as with many young men of his generation, Corporal Richards succumbed to the flu pandemic that followed the war. He died on 15th September 1919, aged just 21 years old.
Ossian Emanuel Richards lies at rest in the cemetery of his home village of Westonzoyland.
Alfred Henry Richards was born in 1891, the oldest of five children to William Henry Richards and his wife Jane. William (who was known as Henry) worked in the local paper mill, and this is a trade that his two sons – Alfred and Leslie – were to follow as well.
Paper making was a driving force in this part of Somerset during the Victorian era, employing a large number of people in Wells and the nearby village of Wookey, which is where Alfred and his siblings were born.
Details of Alfred’s military service are sketchy. He enlisted as a Gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery, although when during the war this happened is unknown.
His troop – the 18th Brigade, 1st Somerset Royal Horse Artillery – was stationed in the UK for the first couple of years of the war, before serving in the Middle East. Again, I have not been able to confirm how much of this service Gunner Richards was involved in.
Alfred returned to Somerset after being demobbed, but within a few months of the end of the war, he succumbed to double pneumonia. He passed away on 1st March 1919, aged just 28 years old.
Alfred Henry Richards lies at rest in the cemetery in Wells, Somerset, not far from his home.
William Cottrell was born in April 1885, the third of twelve children to Henry and Annie Cottrell from Bampton, Devon. When William left school, he became an assistant to the village baker, but new opportunities lay ahead.
In May 1907, William married Maria Wall, the daughter of a stonemason from Wedmore in Somerset. With weeks, the young couple had embarked for a new life, boarding the Empress of Britain in Liverpool, setting sail for Canada.
Emigrating to Manitoba, William became a labourer, and he and Maria had three children – Leslie, Ronald and Kathleen.
War came, and William enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in August 1915. Shipped to England in the spring of the following year, Annie followed suit, returning to Somerset with the three children.
Private Cottrell was assigned to the 44th Battalion Canadian Infantry, setting off for France in August 1916, just weeks before his fourth child – Ruby – was born.
The battalion was involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, and it was during the Somme Offensive that William was shot in the left arm. Initially treated in the field, he was soon shipped back to England to recover in a military hospital in Epsom. Discharged after three months, he was returned to his battalion in early 1917.
The fierce fighting continued, and Private Cottrell was wounded again in October 1918. Further treatment back in the UK was needed, and he was admitted to the 1st Eastern General Hospital in Cambridge.
Details of the William’s injuries at the Somme are readily available, but information on his second lot of injuries is scarcer. They must have been pretty severe, however, as he was not discharged. He lost his final battle after four months, succumbing to his wounds on 9th January 1919. He was 33 years old.
William Cottrell lies at rest in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church in his widow’s home village of Wedmore, Somerset.
William’s gravestone is also a memorial to his eldest son, Leslie, who was killed during the Second World War.
Details of his military service are sketchy, but he enlisted in the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment. His battalion – the 1st – was involved in the fighting in Italy, and it was here that he lost his life. He was killed on 8th February 1944 and is buried in the Sangro River War Cemetery, in Abruzzo.
Hubert Wilfred Labdon was born in the spring of 1896, to Alfred and Elizabeth Labdon, bakers in Ashcott, Somerset. One of five children, with two older brothers and two older sisters, he lost is mother at a very early age; Elizabeth died in 1901.
Hubert had left home by the time he was fifteen, but had not gone far – the 1911 census found him learning a trade from Edgar and Betsy Vining, farmers in the village.
When war came, Hubert enlisted – he joined up in February 1916, aged 19 years and five months. Private Labdon was initially assigned to the Somerset Light Infantry, but he must have quickly shown aptitude, because he was soon transferred to the Machine Gun Corps. After initial training, he found himself on a ship to France, arriving in Camiers, to the south of Boulonge, on 25th September 1916.
Private Labdon’s military records survive and are quite detailed – after an early mishap, where he was docked two days’ pay for losing part of his kit ‘by neglect’, he also spent time in hospital in June 1917.
By August of that year, he was based permanently at Camiers, where he was acting as a stretcher bearer. This was a role he continued to execute until he was demobbed at the end of the war.
His records show Hubert was granted two periods of leave; it was on the second of these, in November 1918, that he married Eva May Acreman. She was two years his senior, a farmer’s daughter from Ashcott as well, although the couple married in Ealing, London.
By mid-December, Private Labden was back in France, and here he stayed until February 1919, when his unit was finally demobilised. On returning to England, the young couple moved back to Ashcott, to be close to his family.
Sadly, Hubert seems to have succumbed to illness as many of his returning colleagues did. The local newspaper gave details of his passing:
The deceased, who was only 23, was recently married. He had served his country during the late war, part time as stretcher bearer. He had suffered from trench fever, which considerably injured his constitution and left him with a weak heart, which, no doubt, was the cause of death.
He had left his home for a short walk, and having been away rather longer than usual [a] search was made for him, and he was found sitting in an unconscious state. He died in a short time after reaching his home.
Deceased was of a very quiet and inoffensive disposition, and was much respected.
Central Somerset Gazette: Friday 2nd January 1920
While the end result was the same, Private Labdon’s military records adds the cause of death as ‘heart failure following influenza and acute diarrhoea’.
Hubert Wilfred Labdon lies at peace in the graveyard of All Saints’ Church, in his home village of Ashcott in Somerset.
Eva remained in Somerset after her husband’s death. In 1930, she married William Langford, a baker, and the couple went on to have a daughter.
Stanley John Counsell was born in September 1896 to George and Ellen, farmers in Glastonbury.
The youngest of five children, Stanley was an apprentice carpenter by the time he enlisted with his brothers Lawrence and Wilfred.
Private Counsell joined the Worcestershire Regiment in 1915 and was sent into action in France in September 1916.
He suffered medically during the war, succumbing to tonsillitis and diarrhoea during his time in France. A bout of tuberculosis in late 1918 saw Stanley shipped back to the UK and admitted to a hospital in Newcastle-upon Tyne.
The end of the Great War came and went, and Stanley was finally discharged from the army in March 1919, as no longer medically fit for war service.
On 2nd May 1919, less than six weeks after being discharged, Private Stanley Counsell passed away. He was 23 years old and was a victim not of the war, but of the subsequent influenza pandemic, which killed 250,000 people in the UK alone.
Stanley John Counsell lies at peace in the cemetery of his home town, Glastonbury.
Frederick Richard Pople was the second of three children – all sons – of Frederick and Emma Pople, born in 1887 in Street, Somerset.
He married Beatrice Cox in 1910 and, by the following year the newlyweds had moved to South Wales, when Frederick found work on the railways. The couple had one child, Frederick Alonzo Pople, who was born in 1912.
Sadly, Beatrice passed away a couple of years later; Frederick married again, to Beatrice Salmon, in November 1914; the couple had a son, Edward George Salmon Pople, who was born on Valentine’s Day 1918.
Frederick enlisted relatively late in the war – he was 30 when he signed up on 25th January 1918, and is likely to have missed the birth of his son.
He enrolled in the Royal Navy and his training took place at HMS Vivid II in Devonport. By March of that year, he was serving as a stoker on the HMS Attentive III, part of the Dover patrol.
Stoker Pople continued to work on the HMS Attentive after the conclusion of hostilities in November 1918. Sadly, he contracted pneumonia and passed away 11th February 1919, leaving Beatrice with a son of less than a year old.
Frederick Richard Pople is buried in the Cemetery of his home town, Glastonbury.
Thomas Edward Moody was born in 1890, the second of five children for Thomas and Emily.
By the start of the war, “Little Tommy Moody” was working with his father in the quarries around Shepton Mallet and was the eldest son living at home.
He joined the North Somerset Yeomanry and was shipped out to France, where he was badly injured. An article in the Shepton Mallet Journal, included after his funeral, says as much about the life of this young man as it does about the Edwardian approach to military matters.
DEATH AND FUNERAL OF A SOLDIER – The death has taken place of Thomas Edward Moody, son of Thomas Moody, of Stoney Stratton, Evercreech, at the age of 18, and who as a 1914 man, joined the North Somerset Yeomanry and went out to France. He was badly wounded, resulting in the loss of an eye, and after some time in hospital and a short leave at home, he was sent back to rejoin his regiment, the 3rd Reserve Cavalry, in France. This was about two years ago. He spent his last leave home at Christmas. After a time in hospital at Devonport, he was removed to Bath early last month, discharged from the army as incurable, and there he died on May 5th, the cause of death being consumption of the brain. The funeral, on Saturday afternoon last, was of military character. The corpse, brought from Bath the day before, was borne from the deceased’s home at Stratton on a hand bier, attended by a bearer party of eight men from Taunton Military Barracks, to the Parish Church, where the first portion of the service was taken. The Union Jack enshrouded the coffin, on and around which a number of floral tributes rested. Sixty members of the Evercreech Branch of the Comrades of the Great War, and a couple of marines, joined the funeral cortege at the home, and on leaving the Church lines up on either side, as the body of their dead comrade was borne hence on the shoulders of four of their number to the cemetery. The vicar, Rev. RY Bonsey, officiated. The Last Post was sounded by Bugler Tucker, of Shepton Mallet, and another bugler from Tauton Barracks. “Little Tommy Moody”, as he was familiarly called amongst his chums, was a conspicuous member of the Evercreech Football Club previous to the War.
Shepton Mallet Journal – 9th May 1919.
(It is interesting to know that the date of death in the article does not match that on the gravestone. I would be inclined to believe the latter.)
Private Moody was obviously a fighter and a strong character – returning to the front after losing an eye, some time in hospital and a short leave – and you can guarantee he was missed in the village.
Thomas Edward Moody lies at rest in the cemetery of his home town, Evercreech.
Death and Service 