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.
Harold Joseph James Dummett was born in early 1900, one of ten children – and the eldest son – of Harry and Elizabeth of Kingsdon, Somerset.
Harold joined the Coldstream Guards, although there are no records to confirm the date of his enlistment. His battalion – the 5th – remained stationed in Windsor throughout the war; it is likely, therefore, that Guardsman Dummett never saw front line service.
His pension records give his mother as his next of kin, while the Register of Soldier’s Effects also name his father.
Guardsman Dummett passed away from pleurisy and pneumonia at the Military Hospital in Purfleet on 15th February 1919. He was 19 years of age.
Harold Joseph James Dummett lies at peace in the quiet All Saints’ Churchyard in his home village of Kingsdon.
While Harold does not appear in the newspaper records, his parents do. In April 1937, the Taunton Courier reports that
Mr and Mrs Harry Dummett celebrated their golden wedding… There was a happy family gathering of all their children and two grandsons.
Taunton Courier and Weston Advertiser – 24th April 1937
Ernest Charles Rawle was born in 1899, the fourth son of George Rawle, a sailor, and Louisa, his wife.
Ernest was still at school at the time of the 1911 census, and enlisted in the West Somerset Yeomanry, but enlisted in the army in April 1915. His served on the Home Front, but was discharged as being unfit for war service on 22nd July 1916.
Private Rawle’s discharge records confirm that he had pulmonary tuberculosis, which he had contracted a couple of months before. They go on to suggest that it was not a permanent condition, but was likely to render him unfit for service for a number of months.
Eager to do his bit, Ernest’s record show that he re-enlisted in August 1916, and that he was considered fit for military service by the November of that year.
His medical records continue further – he was admitted to a field hospital again in March 1917, again suffering from tuberculosis. He was moved back to base as he was “a danger to his comrades”.
His records after March 1917 are not available, but he passed way from TB in November 1919. He was just 21 years old.
Private Ernest Rawle lies at peace in the churchyard of Lydeard St Lawrence, alongside his two brothers, Stephen and William.
George and Louisa’s other son – Edward – also served, enlisting in the Somerset Light Infantry and fighting in the Balkans. Private Edward Rawle survived the war, returning home in March 1919.
It should be noted that, by June 1921, George and Louisa had lost three of her four sons to the Great War. Their daughter, Norah, had also passed away in 1918.
The 1921 census found Louisa living in East Town, in the parish of Tolland, not far from Lydeard St Lawrence. Edward was living with her, as were her three-year-old granddaughter, Lorna, and her eighteen-month-old grandson Beatty. It is unclear whose children they were. George, at this point, was helping his younger brother out on the family farm in Williton.
Samuel James Hayes was born in the Somerset village of Milverton in May 1879. He was the eldest son of James and Harriet.
James was an agricultural labourer, but Samuel wanted more than this; he enlisted in the Royal Marine Artillery in February 1897, three months before his 18th birthday.
The 1901 census finds Gunner Hayes in the Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth, while ten years later, he was on board the HMS Swiftsure in the Mediterranean.
In May 1912, he married Annie Thorne, also from Milverton, in his home village. Two years later, just before Christmas 1914, their first – and only – child, Lionel, was born.
I have struggles to find anything specific relating to Gunner Hayes’ wartime service. He certainly continued to serve, and by the time of his death had clocked up more than twenty years’ service in the Royal Marine Artillery.
Samuel passed away on 6th July 1919, at the age of 38. One record I have located suggests that he died in a military hospital in Malta, but whether he passed there or in the UK, he was buried back in Somerset.
Gunner Samuel James Hayes lies at rest in St Michael & All Angel’s churchyard in Milverton.
