L/Cpl 24834 Hugh Westaway Harvey

Hugh Westaway Harvey was born in the December quarter of 1896, the eldest son of Alfred Hugh Harvey and Florence (née Denton).  His father, from Sheffield, and his mother, from Plymouth, married in Plymouth in 1894 and had five children. Hugh had an older sister Florence May, born in Plymouth in 1895.  After Hugh’s birth in 1896 the family moved to St. Blazey, Cornwall, near St. Austell on the south coast, where Alfred Montague was born in 1900, Charles Ernest in 1901, and Gwendoline in 1903.

 

In 1901 the family is living at 1 Lamb Park Terrace, St. Blazey, Cornwall, with three children.  His father is listed as a commercial traveller, wholesale drapery. Hugh is 5. Also in the household is his grandmother Christiana Denton, 70, and a domestic servant.

 

By 1911 the family have moved north to New Brighton, Cheshire, living in 10 rooms at 2 Dovedale Road with five children and a domestic servant.  His father, 41, is the manager of a wholesale drapery warehouse, his mother is 40.  Florence, 15, Hugh, 14, Alfred, 10, Charles, 9, and Gwendoline, 7, are all at school.  Another daughter, Margaret, was born in 1912.

 

Hugh attended Wallasey Grammar School and before the war worked for Ralli Brothers in Liverpool.  At the time that the war started, Rallis, an Anglo-Greek company in Calcutta, held the exclusive contract with the British War Department for jute sandbags.

 

He enlisted in Liverpool in January 1915 joining the 17th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 24834. When he enlisted his middle name was written as Westerway. He was billeted at Prescot Watch Factory, he trained there and also at Knowsley Hall. On 30th April 1915 the 17th Battalion alongside the other three Pals battalions left Liverpool via Prescot Station for further training at Belton Park, Grantham. They remained here until September 1915 when they reached Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain. He arrived in France on 7^th November 1915. 

Hugh will have been involved in the successful capture of Montauban on 01st July 1916. The Pals subsequent task was to assist with the clearing of the Germans from Trones Wood. Hugh was by now Lance Corporal. 

The murderous fighting that went on inside Trones Wood rendered it impossible to put specific dates on some of the casualties which is why many of the 17^th Battalion losses have been bracketed as killed in action between 10^th – 12th July 1916. The conditions are best described in the following passage from Everard Wyrall’s book The History of The King’s Regiment (Liverpool) Volume II. 

The remembrance of Trones Wood in July 1916 to those who passed through it is of a noisome, horrible place, of a tangled mass of trees and undergrowth which had been tossed and flung about in frightful confusion by the shells of both sides. Of the ghastly dead which lay about in all directions, and of DEATH, lurking in every hole and corner with greedy hands ready to snatch the lives of the unwary. The place was a Death trap, and although the attacks were made with great determination,   the presence of snipers who could not be detected and often fired into the backs of our men made the clearing of the wood impossible.

Hugh was killed in action during these attacks, he was 19 years of age. His body was either lost or his grave was subsequently destroyed as his name is now amongst those listed on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.

The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July and November 1916.

On 01st August 1932 the Prince of Wales and the President of France inaugurated the Thiepval Memorial in Picardy. The inscription reads: “Here are recorded the names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields between July 1915 and March 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.”

Hugh's death was reported in the Wallasey News on 22/07/1916:

"Another old Grammar School boy has made the supreme sacrifice for his country. Lance-Corporal Hugh Westaway Harvey, of the Liverpool Pals, was shot through the head and killed instantly. He was the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Harvey,of "Sunny Meade," Breck-road, Wallasey, and was employed with Messrs. Ralli Brothers, Liverpool. He was nineteen years of age".

Hugh earned his three medals.  His parents, living at Sunny Mead, Breck Road, Wallasey, received Hugh’s Army effects, including a War Gratuity of £6-10s.

 

His father died in 1937 in Wallasey, aged 68.  In 1939 his mother, 69, is living with son Charles and daughter Florence at 70 Broadway Avenue, Wallasey.  His mother died in 1954 at the age of 83.

 

Hugh is commemorated on the following memorials -

Wallasey Grammar School Memorial

Parish of Poulton Memorial

Liverpool’s Hall of Remembrance, Panel 55 Right