Pte 38815 Harry Hampson

• Age: 25
• From: Blackburn
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: A.8

Harry was born in Blackburn on 05^th February 1892 and was the son of Richard Hampson and his wife Margaret Ellen Duckworth (nee Mercer) who were married in 1885. He was baptised in St. Paul’s Church, Blackburn, on 17^th April 1892.

The 1901 Census shows the family are living at 58 Fielden Street, Blackburn.

Harry is 9 years of age and is living with his parents and his elder brother. His father is shown as a dry soap labourer born in Mellor, Lancashire in 1864, whilst his mother was born in Blackburn in 1859. His elder sibling is John aged 12 and recorded as a Grocer's errand boy, he was born in Blackburn in 1889.  

The family later moved to Liverpool and the 1911 Census finds them living at 404 Edge Lane, Fairfield, Liverpool.

His parents state that they have been married for 26 years and have had two children. Harry is now 19 and a labourer in a soap works. His father also works as a labourer in a soap works and his brother John is shown as a traveller for a soap works. Also present are Harry's grandfather John Hampson aged 86 and a boarder Richard Parkinson who also hails from Blackburn and works for a soap works. 

Harry enlisted in Liverpool and was originally posted to the 1st Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regiment but following a transfer he was serving in the 20^th Battalion as Private No 38815 when he was killed in action on the 9^th April 1917, aged 25, during the opening day of the Battle of Arras.

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded. 

He now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France.

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

Notice in Liverpool Post & Mercury, 27^th April 1917:

‘The death in action is announced on Easter Monday of Private Harry Hampson, the youngest beloved son of Mr. and Mrs. Hampson, of Edge Lane. In a letter to his parents the commanding officer states:-

“Your son was an invaluable fellow; your loss was our loss. He was the company driver and nobody could better him at his work.”

Prior to the war he was employed at Lister Drive Power Station.’

Harry is also commemorated on the War Memorial at Birchfield Council School, Fairfield, Liverpool.
 

Soldiers Effects to father Richard, Pension to mother Margaret, 404 Edge Lane.

Mother Margaret died aged 65 in 1920 and the father died in 1937 aged 74.

We currently have no further information on Harry Hampson, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.