Name
Harry Sheppard
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Pirton School Memorial
Biography
Harry appears on the School War Memorial, confirming that he attended the school. Parish and census records suggest only one possible man of this name who could have served, and he was born on June 12th 1889 to Alfred Thomas and Elizabeth Shepherd (née Walker). He would have been twenty-five at the outbreak of war. Baptism and census records list eleven children, but by 1911 one had died. The children were; Rosetta (bapt 1877), Clarence Frederick (bapt 1878), Hedley Albert (b 1880), Mabel Lizzie (b 1882), Cordelia Jane (bapt 1884), Bertie John (b 1887, d 1894, aged seven), Harry (b 1889), Alice Elizabeth (bapt 1891), Sidney William (b 1893), Violet Maud (b 1896) and Lilian Grace (b 1899). Harry’s brothers Hedley and Sidney also served and survived.
In 1911, the family home was around Little Green. Harry, then twenty-one, was living with his parents and working as a machinist in a joinery works.
He is recorded in the September Parish Magazine of 1915 as enlisting sometime during 1915, but before August, and serving in the Royal Naval Flying Corps (this must be Royal Naval Air Services or Royal Flying Corps). The skills learned in his work would have been essential to keep these fragile machines repaired and in the air.
Acknowledgments
Text from the book ‘The Pride of Pirton’ by Jonty Wild, Tony French & Chris Ryan used with author's permission
