Name
Harry Abbiss
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
106070
Hertfordshire Yeomanry
1 Coy.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
NA
Biography
By 1918 he was Private 106070, 1st Company, 1st Battalion, Hertfordshire Yeomanry Regiment. Home was recorded as ‘near Burge End’, a name then given to a much larger area than the current road. It was probably one of the cottages known as ‘Ten Steps’. These were a row of four small cottages, built in the mid 18th century and demolished in 1980 to make way for the new development near 13 Shillington Road.
Harry was born on April 17th 1890 to George and Ann Abbiss. The 1911 census records that they had seven children, but three had died and to us remain unnamed. The surviving children were: Harry, two sisters, Elizabeth (b c1882) and Mary (known as Polly, b 1886) and an elder brother, Frank (b 1881), who sadly died in the war and appears on the War Memorial. Harry appears on the School War Memorial, confirming that he attended the school. In the years before the war he worked on the local farms.
He is recorded in the Parish Magazine of July 1916 as enlisting between October 21st 1915 and March 2nd 1916 and serving in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry. He would have been twenty-five.
His grandson, Richard Abbiss, has helped provide some details of Harry’s life; he married Kate Ethel (possibly née Titmuss) and they had a son, Frank, probably named after Harry’s brother. Kate died on August 12th 1934, aged forty-one. Four years later, on November 11th 1938, Harry was killed in an accident on Henlow airfield. He had been working in one of the buildings and was putting tools away with a workmate when a plane crashed into the building, killing him. He was forty-eight. The pilot survived and later visited Harry’s sister Polly to apologise.
Interestingly, and only very recently, a letter has been discovered written by R W Ellis, First Lieutenant Adjutant, No 4 (T) Wing, RAF Henlow Camp, to Harry’s sister, Mrs Weeden. In it he expresses his ‘deepest sympathy’ and offers the comfort that ‘we do know that his death was instantaneous, and that he suffered no pain.’
Additional Information
Text from the book ‘The Pride of Pirton’ by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used with author's permission
Acknowledgments
Text from the book “The Pride of Pirton” by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used.
