Submitted by Michael Kent.
Joseph Hatton was my dad. I only recently learnt about his early life. Dad never spoke about the First World War. He was born 20 February 1896 in Bradford and had three sisters and two brothers. My dad never told me that grandad was a train driver in the 1890’s, or that I had a half brother born in 1915, that he lost his father in 1919 and his wife, when he was in his early twenties. I do not know what happened or where he went from 1922 until 1950 when he was living in London where I was born thirty years later, in 1952.
10724 Private Joseph Hatton was recruited in Yorkshire in August 1914 and served in the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (3rd West Riding) as a Reserve. After training in England he was sent to the Western Front in 1915. In May of that year he was poisoned by gas. My dad didn’t die, unlike so many around him who suffered this cruel death, but he was evacuated via Boulogne to Manchester Western General Hospital to recover. He was posted again in December 1915. In March 1916 he was then posted to the 9th Battalion and embarked for France again in April. He had a few days leave in Etaples and then returned to the front. He was wounded in July 1916 by a shell explosion killing many men. Dad lost his hand. He was put on a train back to England. He was discharged as unfit for service in April 1917 having served for 2yrs and 250days. He received the Victory Medal, British War Medal, 1914/15 Star, Kings Certificate and War Badge.
Growing up, all I knew about Dad’s past was that he had been a Royal Arch Druid in the 59th Chapter and that he worked as a civil servant in London, in the social security or pensions department. He drove a car, we went on holidays, he liked a pint, smoked a pipe and was very sociable. How could he tell me of the horrors of war and his losses? Dad retired to Cambridge and died in 1973 when I was 20.
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Pte J F Firby
Private Firby was born in 1883 and came from Richmond, living at 49 Newbiggin. He enlisted on 12th December 1914 at the age of 31. He was a ‘Commission Agent’. He was posted to the 6th battalion on 24th August 1915 and arrived in Gallipoli on 8th September. He was wounded by shrapnel on 25th October 1915 when, according to the Battalion War Diary, at 9.30 in the morning there was a ‘Fire display by the Turks along whole of the front. 8 men wounded by shrapnel.’ He returned home on 15th November 1915. He appears among the list of wounded in the December 1915 edition of The Green Howards Gazette. On recovering from his wounds, Private Firby was transferred to the Labour Corps on 22nd May 1917 and he saw out the remainder of the war with the Labour Corps. Private Firby was examined by a Medical Board on 9th March 1917 and was in The Royal Victoria Hospital, Edinburgh on 29th July 1918 when a copy of The New Testament was presented to him. Private Firby was discharged from military service on 4th April 1919. Private Firby was again examined in 1920 and 1921 and declared to have a 40% disability, the cause being listed as ‘Bronchitis’ and granted an award of 8 shillings per week.
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Driver John Marwood
Submitted by Peter Marwood, a long term resident of Richmond. I was brought up on my late father’s farm in Langthorne near Bedale. Driver John Marwood 671397 of the 379th Battery, Royal Field Artillery was my father’s brother and my uncle. John Marwood was born at Gayles near Richmond on the 16th of May 1890. He was the second of four children of John and Caroline Marwood. The family initially lived at Gayles where John senior was self employed as a master carpenter. By 1901 the family had moved to a rented farm at Aske Moor and began farming. After a few years they moved to a larger and better farm which was Low Coalsgarth farm. John is listed in the 1911 census as working as a gardener at Selaby Hall near Gainford. The family were living at the farm at the time of John’s death in France. He was wounded on the Somme during the famous Kaiserschlacht offensive which began on the 21st March 1918. My father and his other brother Harry recounted that John had been badly wounded at the Front and was taken to hospital in Rouen but sadly died of his wounds on the 25th of March 1918 aged 28. He is buried in the St Sever cemetery in Rouen. During the 1950s my father would usually attend the Great Yorkshire Show, along with my Uncle Harry and one older brother and if we were lucky myself or my younger brother would get to go too….
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Henry Parker
Henry Parker In October 2015 the Green Howards Museum was contacted by the Ministry of Defence’s Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC). Human remains had been found in a field to the north- east of the village of Martinpuich on the Somme. The JCCC wanted to know if we could do anything to help identify this unknown soldier. We looked at events around Martinpuich between 25 and 27 September 1916. 77 men were lost, whilst an additional 319 Officers and Other Ranks were either wounded, or listed as ‘missing’. The remains could have belonged to any one of a potential 396 men. Through a process of elimination using research and archive information, we produced a shortlist of 12. To get any further, science needed to play its part. The Forensic team from JCCC collected DNA from the femur of the remains. DNA was taken from the next of kin of our shortlisted missing soldiers who had agreed to take part in the process. The remains were positively identified as those of 3183 Private Henry Parker, born 29th September 1893 in Weavererthorpe, in the Yorkshire Wolds. He was killed in action, aged 22, during the Battle of the Somme on 26 September 1916. Shoulder badges, uniform buttons, a belt buckle and clip, bullet and cut throet razor were found with the remains of Private Henry Parker – these are now on display at the museum. He was reburied with full military honours in Warlencourt Cemetary in France on 17th May 2017….