Harding, Frank Ernest

BORN HULL 08/04/1893. SON OF HENRY BELL HARDING (1862-1941) & JANE ANN HARDING AT THIS ARMY RECORDS ADDRESS. ALSO LIVED AT 1 CARNIVAL TERRACE, ALEXANDRA STREET IN 1901. BROTHER TO JOHN AND JANE. EMPLOYED AS A TAILOR’S CUTTER. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS, AGED 22. DESCRIBED AS 5 FOOT, 9.5 INCHES TALL, 36 INCH CHEST, 140 LBS WEIGHT. SERVED IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. DIED OF WOUNDS, ON 29/03/1915, AGED 25. HE IS BURIED IN FRANCE. HIS GRAVE INSCRIPTION, READS, “DEATH DOTH HIDE BUT NOT DIVIDE THOU ART BUT ON CHRIST’S OTHER SIDE”. HIS BROTHER, SAPPER, ALFRED WILLIAM HARDING, ROYAL ENGINEERS WAS KILLED AT GALLIPOLI, ON 19/08/1915, AGED 28.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE FRANK ERNEST HARDING 10/1248. One of the original Pals, Frank was born in 1893, the youngest of five children to Henry and Jane Harding of 24 Grey Street, Hull. He enlisted on 9th April 1915 at Hull City Hall and joined up with the battalion as it trained in various makeshift barracks throughout East and North Yorkshire over the summer of 1915. He shipped to Egypt in the December and helped defend the Suez Canal from the Turks before receiving their orders for the trenches of France in the March of 1916. Frank was a veteran of the Somme and Oppy Wood and his experiences there would surely have made a hardened soldier of a man who once worked as a Tailor’s Cutter. He died of wounds on 29th March 1918 and is buried at Bac-du-Sud British Cemetery. He was 25 years old. Frank’s eldest brother Alfred William Harding enlisted in November 1914 and I wonder how much of an influence a role model like him might have been on his joining up. Alfred was part of the Royal Engineers Postal Section and he died of wounds at Gallipoli on 19/05/1915.