Lives of the First World War

1914

William Edward Colebrooke Hutchings enlisted in 1914 and served in France in 1915 as a Private in the Motor Transport section of the Army Service Corps. Having received a temporary commission in the R.A.S.C., dated 4th September 1915, he was promoted to Lieutenant in 1916, and Captain in December 1917. He served from October 1915 until March 1916 in Salonika, and then in France until January 1918, and was responsible for very important M.T. organisation in connection with the Arras Offensive, and then the Flanders Offensive, and Battles of Messines and of Ypres in 1917 He was wounded, both ear-drums being injured by concussion in 1916, and again, this time by shrapnel in the groin, in January 1918. He was invalided home and his health was found to be so seriously affected that he was unable to take up a Staff appointment to which he had been posted. Frederick Vaughan Hutchings was gazetted Temporary 2nd Lieutenant, M.T., R.A.S.C., on 4th October 1915, but was very seriously injured in an A.S.C. motor accident, in which the driver was killed, near Aldershot, in the following November. In addition to injuries to leg and spine, he received serious internal injuries, and he relinquished his commission in April 1917, on account of ill health caused by this accident, though he was temporarily employed under the Admiralty at Woolwich in 1918. John Stewart Hutchings enlisted in the 7th Royal West Kents in September 1914, and took a commission in the King's Liverpool Special Reserve, dated 6th January 1915. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 17th December 1915, and served in France with the 4th Battalion from February 1916 until he was wounded in the right thigh on 19th July 1916. He rejoined his Battalion at the Front in March 1917, but was again very seriously wounded at the end of the following June, and he never fully recovered from his injuries. Kenneth Lotherington Hutchings was in business in Liverpool when war broke out, and he was one of the first of the cricketing world to volunteer for service. This he did within two or three days of the declaration of war, and was gazetted to the Special Reserve of the King's Liverpool Regiment on 24th September 1914. He went out to France on 26th April 26th 1915, being attached until September to the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He returned home in December 191, to undergo an operation. He was gazetted Lieutenant on 17th December 1915, and in July 1916, returned to France, attached to the 12th Battalion of his own Regiment, the King's Liverpool. From this time onward he was continually in the thick of the fighting, and on 3rd September 1916 he was instantaneously killed by a machine gun whilst leading his men in an attack at Ginchy. A fellow officer wrote, "I knew him before the war at Formby, and had a great admiration for him. Out here you get to know a man very intimately, and every one thought what a fine fellow he was." His C.O. also wrote, “During the short time he was with this Battalion he gained the respect of officers and men as a keen, hardworking officer and a good sportsman."

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