H.J.M. has submitted the following:
Herbert William was yet another young man who was missing, assumed killed in action. He first enlisted in 1914 with the Durham Light Infantry but within eight months was to be found in Hawke Battalion. Information from The Royal Naval Division Casualties of the Great War tells of his transfer to the battalion and being invalided to the U.K. suffering from jaundice in September 1915. His war records do not survive but it is known that Hawke Battalion suffered many casualties on November 13th 1916 at the Battle of Ancre.
He was one of William and Mary Hardcastle’s three children and was born in 1895, baptised in Kirkby Stephen and later lived in Bishop Auckland – Cedar Road West, High Bondgate and Boddy Street. Like many of his contemporaries he knew colliery life and at 14 was a pony driver underground. Later in life he was a lamplighter.
He is remembered in Bishop Auckland on B140.03, B140.12 page 10 and B140.24
