Lives of the First World War

September 1912 - May 1916

Harry left school attaining a Labour Certificate and he was already working as a farm boy, just as his brothers before him had. However, Moss Cottage and The Hardway were not for Harry or his older brother Reginald and both followed their older brother Edwin's example. On 3rd Sept 1912 both brother's traveled to Bristol to join the Royal Navy. Their respective Royal Naval Records give us a description of what they looked like; Harry was 5ft 1in tall with brown hair, grey eyes and a fresh complexion having a scar on his left elbow, while Reginald is 5ft 4in tall with brown hair, blue eyes, a fresh complexion with several small scars on his back. Harry began his naval career aboard the training ship HMS Impregnable in Devonport, Plymouth where he began with the usual rating of Boy II as did his older brother Edwin while Reginald began his training at HMS Vivid I, the Royal Naval Barracks at Devonport. Throughout their varying careers the three brothers would not serve on board the same ship at the same time, although all three would experience the awful reality of war at sea. Following his training Harry served on HMS Endymion and HMS Lancaster briefly before boarding HMS Temeraire; an 18,600-ton battleship with a ships compliment of 733 men and an armament consisting of 10 BL 12 inch Mk X guns, 16 BL Mk VII guns and 4 three pounders with 3 18 inch torpedo tubes. Harry was a fully trained gunner, and it was while he was serving on-board this ship in August 1914 that he would have heard the news that his country was at war with Germany. Reginald remained with his first ship, HMS Roxburgh throughout his five years of service, during which time he was to be involved in many interesting assignments. In December 1912 HMS Rosburgh was ordered to protect the stranded SS Ludgate off Morocco. The ship then joined the 3rd Cruiser Squadron in February 1913 before joining the Grand Fleet in August the next year. On 6 August 1914, together with HMS Argyll, she captured a German merchant ship. After a refit in January 1915 she was hit by torpedoes from the German u-boat U39 and sustained damage to her bow on 20 June. Repaired in April of 1916 she was sent to Norwegian waters. Then later on in September that year she served on the North American and West Indies Station until the Armistice. She also rammed and sank the German u-boat U89 while escorting a convoy off the coast of Northern Ireland on 12 February 1918. In August 1919 Reginald was demobilised, a career with the Navy was not for him. Edwin was a career sailor and his career would ultimately span 22 years from 1902-1924 before he was pensioned off. For the duration of The Great War he too was aboard just one ship, HMS New Zealand and he was destined to be involved in; the Battle of Heligoland Bight, which took place on 28 August 1914, the raid on Scarborough on 3 November 1914, the Battle of Dogger Bank on 23 January 1915, and the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916 when both he and Harry would be engaged within the same battle fleet. Another older brother, Frank, had remained contentedly at home until war broke out when he, like so many others from the village joined Kitchener's army and the 8th Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry, although he was later to be redeployed to the Devonshire Regiment. Frank's war was to be very different from his brothers' war at sea. As a soldier he was sent to France in September 1915, although his military service record has not survived to be able to definitively state where or when he was posted and what action he was involved in.The only certain fact is that Frank survived the war and was demobilised on 13 April 1919.

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