Name
Frederick Joseph Thomas Johnson
1895
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
16/04/1915
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
14478
Bedfordshire Regiment
1st Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 /15 Star, British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL
Panel 31 and 33
Belgium
Headstone Inscription
N/A
UK & Other Memorials
Hemel Hempstead Town Memorial, Leverstock Green Village Memorial, John Dickinson & Co Memorial, Apsley Mills, Apsley, We are not aware of any memorial in Little Tring, Not on Tring memorial. Marsworth Village Memorial, Bucks.
Pre War
Frederick Joseph Thomas Johnson (known as Fred) was born in 1895 in Little Tring, Herts, the son of Frederick and Elizabeth Johnson. They had moved to Marsworth, Bucks by the time his sister Annie was born 1898.
On the 1901 Census the family of parents, Florence (born 1889, straw plaiter), Ethel (born 1890), Daisy (born 1893), Fred and Annie (born 1898) were living at Main Road, Marsworth, where Fred’s father was working as a "Navvy" [labourer].
The family of parents, Frederick, Annie, Rose (born 1902), William (born 1905), Alfred (born 1908) and Dennis (born 1910) remained there on the 1911 Census, when his father was working as a Bricklayer's Labourer and Frederick was a Farm Labourer.
It is believed that Fred later moved to Leverstock Green, Hertfordshire to live with his Great Uncle George Gill (his grandmother's younger brother) and found work at the local Paper Mill at Apsley Mills, (John Dickinson & Co.)
Pension records give his parents address as 278 New Cottages, Marsworth, Nr Tring, and later 32 Chiswick Road, Chiswick, W4.
Wartime Service
Frederick enlisted shortly after the outbreak of war and was named in a report in the Hemel Gazette on 5 Sep as one of those who had enlisted at Hemel Hempstead. He joined the Bedfordshire Regiment as Private 14778 and was posted to the 1st Battalion for basic training. He went to France on 2 Feb 1915, joining D Company in the trenches near Ypres on 19 Feb.
The Battalion were in trenches opposite Hill 60 between 12 and 16 Apr and were working in old disused French and German trenches, opening up communication trenches and preparing dugouts for extra battalions due to arrive for the Attack on Hill 60.
Fred was killed on 16 April aged 20, only 72 days after his arrival in France. He has no known grave and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate, Memorial Ypres. It is possible that he may have been one of the unknown soldiers reburied at Oosttaverne Wood Cemetery, along with others from the Bedfordshire Regiment, some of whom were identified and were known to have died around the same time.
Additional Information
His mother received a war gratuity of £3 and pay owing of £4 8s 10d. She also received a pension of 5 shillings a week. N.B. The vicar of Leverstock Green named Frederick Johnson in his 1919 Easter pamphlet as the F Johnson on the war memorial and the local Gazette newspaper listed him as working for John Dickinson's stationery company. The company's war memorial in Apsley, Herts, names F Johnson, Bedfordshire Regiment as having been killed.
Acknowledgments
Brenda Palmer, Neil Cooper
Jonty Wild, www.hemelheroes.com., www.dacorumheritage.org.uk., www.hemelatwar.org.
