WßD ~ Chapter 30 ~ Harry Marshall Senior (Henry Alfred Marshall) ~ 2/5th Btn Gloucestershire Regiment PART ONE

Windsor Street Days

Chapter Thirty | Harry Marshall Senior (Henry Alfred Marshall)

PART ONE

Chapter Thirty incorporates the extensive research document compiled on my behalf by Bob Brunsdon, Researcher, Guild of Battlefield Guides, and that Research Document is registered as:

The War Service
of
Private 240925 Henry Alfred Marshall
of the
2/5th Battalion,
Gloucestershire Regiment

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Introduction

by

Kenneth Thomas Webb

I

My Family ~ paternal (Webb) and maternal (Marshall) ~ will be aware that both families volunteered for military service in both World Wars. My Grandfathers, their brothers and then their sons, all of them, my great uncles or uncles, rallied to the Colours in both World Wars. My last uncle Frank Frederick Marshall (1938-2018) also served with the Royal Air Force, electing to serve three not two years of National Service whose service was primarily with Operation Grapple, the United Kingdom’s testing of the Hydrogen Bomb in 1957-1958.

The substance of Victory in the hands of the victor can very quickly precipitate into a jelly that slips through every hand seeking to hold it when the victor acts with bullishness, arrogance and a determination to subjugate the vanquished.

Had victory not turned into jelly at the Palace of Versailles in 1919, then it is feasible that there would have been no Second World War and thus we would still be writing of the Great War 1914-1918.

But that is a very simplistic approach. We only have to look at the current War in Ukraine - the War in Europe - to realise that we cannot lay the blame solely at the feet of the victors preening themselves in the Hall of Mirrors in 1919.

This Chapter is the research by Bob Brunsdon (we served together in the Training Branch of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve) with respect to my maternal family line ~ Marshall ~ whose Name is very proudly born as his second baptismal name by my second of four great-nephews. Each generation, paternal and maternal, carries on the tradition established two centuries ago whereby the family branches are incorporated.

II

A Note to the Family

In decades to come long beyond my passing, you may, when reading Windsor Street Days, wonder why it is that Uncle Ken refers to both his uncles as Harry when in fact his great uncle who died in October 1918 is Henry Alfred Marshall (1897-1918) whereas Ken’s immediate uncle Harry Alfred Marshall (1923-1945) was killed in action in January 1945.

Could it be that both were Harry Alfred Marshall?

To our descendants, my reply is that this took me by surprise, too. With Census and Parish Records, there is frequently ambivalence. A misheard name, a misunderstood pronunciation, and so on. My great uncle, Henry Alfred Marshall, my sisters and I only ever heard our grandparents and parents refer to him as Harry. Harry Alfred Marshall, we knew only as Great Uncle Harry. Bob Brunsdon’s research first revealed the formal name, Henry.

III

An Uncle and His Nephew | A Nephew and His Uncle

Henry (Harry) Alfred Marshall (1897-1918) Sr

Henry (Harry) Alfred Marshall (1897-1918) Sr

Private 240925
2/5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment

Harry Alfred Marshall (1923-1945) Jr

Harry Alfred Marshall Jr (1923-1945)

Sergeant (Flight Engineer) Royal Air Force 1337884

Seconded to the Royal Canadian Air Force 405 City of Vancouver Pathfinder Squadron Path Finder Force No. 8 Group RAF Gransden Lodge
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain

The temporary rank at the time of death was Flight Sergeant.

Henry has two brothers. Frederick Marshall and Frank Ewart Marshall. Henry was the middle of the three. At the time of drafting Chapter Thirty, all leads remain temporarily silent regarding the eldest brother Frederick.

Frederick Marshall

We have no photographic record, but we do have his Bible in which he meticulously inscribes and dates his Name.

The handwriting suggests a purposeful and precise young man in 1906, aware that he was the eldest brother and who, eight years later in 1914 upon the declaration of war, immediately joined up. Ours is a family of volunteers. His youngest brother Frank, my grandfather, also joined up and he and Henry served in the Gloucestershire Regiment whereas Frederick served with a different Regiment, as yet unconfirmed. All we know is that Frederick did not survive the war.

Rumour and gossip always flourish in the absence of evidence, and Grandad did not help matters by always clamming up about our Uncle Fred. Yet, Grandad and Grandma remembered Frederick by naming their youngest son, Frank Frederick Marshall in 1938.

Uncle Frank and I talked a great deal about this between 2016-2018. Frank had a razor-sharp mind, intellect and recall, and it is a matter of pride to the whole family that none of us has thereby forgotten Uncle Fred. In the 1911 Census I learn that our great uncle was 19, and serving an apprenticeship in bookkeeping. That tells me much. My legal training and constant examination of ancient legal documents over thirty years in the course of legal practice reveals to me a wealth of information in, what appears to the lay or disinterested, a single line scant of bearest details.

The 1911 Census, shows me a family with my Great Grandmother Agnes as head of the family (her husband Samuel had passed away in 2010) and running a home owned by the family with three rumbustious sons aged 19, 15 and 12. Two are gainfully employed, and my grandfather is studying hard at school. I can say that with certainty, for I have a lifetime’s knowledge of Frank Ewart Marshall’s skills, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit. I know from both my Grandparents, from my Mum Mrs Nancy Webb nee Marshall and her younger brother, Frank Frederick, that everything had to be “spick and span”, a point I saw well in evidence even up to 2018 when visiting Uncle Frank. Thus, these three lines tell me a great deal about my great-grandmother, Agnes Marshall, as well. There are many photographs within the archive, most of which I’ve yet to bring to the fore.

But this is the first time I sense that I am getting to know my senior great-uncle, Frederick Marshall. I sense we would get on well together. I like his attention to detail, his bookkeeping, and the fact that he is in an apprenticeship. Because I fast forward this to 2022-2023 when I see with enormous pride that my second of four great nephews is serving an Apprenticeship with BMW, and as I have mentioned before, his middle name is Frederick’s surname.

I smile as a tiny light bulb moment flicks on as I read ‘bookkeeping’. So THIS is why I was able to draft estate and trust accounts and design spreadsheets to self-calculate. It’s in the DNA, the maternal side!

It is also very important for the Family to see that Grandma Marshall, Martha Isabella Marshall nee Hope, recorded ancestral notes in Frederick’s Bible. That would have comforted Grandad enormously. My sisters and I know Grandma only too well. Grandma was making a ‘permanent ink point’ of ensuring that all of us and our descendants remember Frederick.

How sad, that all of this was destroyed by the antics of one man living in a world of his own in 1914.

How dreadful that the antics of another man living in a world of his own repeated this destruction in 1939.

How terrifying that yet another man living in a world of his own kills thousands upon thousands, and dares to threaten the use of Nuclear weapons if NATO and the West attempt to thwart his aim to achieve his second Holodomor in Ukraine, a man who has dared to bring a major war in Europe. In January 2023, repeatedly questioned by the BBC’s Ms Joanna Gosling on reports that the number of Russian soliders killed to date is 117,000, Sergei Alexandrovich Markov (born 1958) evaded the question several times. Faced with Ms Gosling’s persistent but very polite probing, Mr Markov finally shrugged his shloulders mumbling that war is war and that we should consider the numbers killed on the Ukrainian side. Mr Markov missed the point though. We have a fairly good idea of Ukrainian military casualties, for the fighting is aggressive and ruthless, and casualties may well be ‘like for like’. What we do know from both the Ukraine Government and the People of Mariupol, the Ukraine Government estimated upwards of 25,000 civilian deaths during last year’s siege. The people of Mariupol suggest it is more likely to[ be upwards of 30,000 cvilian deaths.

Kenneth .T. Webb

6 February 2023
All Rights Reserved

© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2023

Page 1

Pre-War Life and Enlistment

Harry was born at Cheltenham on 1 September 1897. The 1901 census return shows that his father, Samuel, was a bricklayer, living with his wife Agnes and their family at Croft Cottage, Saint Marks, Cheltenham. His father died in 1910 and by the time of the 1911 census Harry, now aged 15, was working as a Page Boy at a local hotel.

Harry was sixteen when war broke out in 1914, turning seventeen in September of that year. Shortly afterwards he enlisted at Gloucester into the county regiment and, because of his age, was posted to the 2/5th (second line) battalion. One of the problems the army faced when the war broke out was that many members of the Territorial Force were too young to serve overseas, the minimum age for this being nineteen. One solution was to post the younger soldiers to the second-line battalion so that by the time the battalion was ready to proceed overseas, many of them would have reached the required age. It is that which has led to misunderstandings regarding the age of recruits during World War One. The 2/5th Battalion went overseas in May 1916 although Harry, still too young to go with them, would have  followed in a later reinforcement draft.

On joining the 2/5th Battalion, Henry was given the service number 3030. The numbers were issued in sequence and thus, by comparing his with similar service numbers issued to men whose date of enlistment is known, it can be established that he did so during the second week of October 1914, probably on the thirteenth of the month.

By the time of his death in 1918, Harry’s family appears to have moved to Vine Cottage in Alstone Lane, Cheltenham.

Vine Cottage, Alstone Lane, Cheltenham as it is today

Vine Cottage, Alstone Lane, Cheltenham as it was then ~ circa 1919. Grandad and Great Grandma. Mrs Agnes Marshall with her only surviving son Frank Ewart Marshall circa 1914. This appears to be the side elevation to that shown in the previous photograph. KTW

Five years on …

Frank Ewart Marshall - Grandad - circa Spring 1919 Vine Cottage after repatriation and demobilisation

Seeing the difference in hairstyles, build and deportment, It is reasonable to assume that Frank is with his mother circa 1914.

This photographic portrait captures so much. The outward calm belies the inner turmoil that soldiers live with when peace returns. KTW

Provenance

This 2018 note predates the formal research document. My note must be read in light of subsequent research herein, especially as regards the presumption of the Battle of the Somme and the years 1916-1918. KTW

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Page 2

1901 Census

Page 3

1911 Census

Unfinished Pages 4-60 are being transcribed.
KTW


23 April 2024
All Rights Reserved

© 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb


Last published 6 February 2023