Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE HERBERT HODGSON 11/681. Born in January 1896, Herbert was the fifth of eight children to Leonard and Sarah Hodgson. The family moved south to Hull and the 1911 Census finds them residing at 5 Wellington Terrace, South Parade and Herbert, at 15, working as an Errand Boy. There’s no direct trail, but a Herbert Hodgson married one Hilda Selby in Hull in October 1915, and something in me hopes that was our man finding some happiness before he shipped to Egypt and then on to the trenches of the Western Front. It hammers the message home doesn’t it to read that just three years before he was given a rifle and sent to a fight in a ditch he was taking parcels round on a delivery bike? Herbert enlisted a month after the war started. He served with the 11th East Yorkshire regiment and was killed by an exploding shell in the trenches, on 3rd August 1916 during the Somme campaign. He is buried at Le Touret Military Cemetery; he was 20 years old.
His death was reported in the Hull Daily Mail, on 23/08/1916. His commanding Officer wrote, “Your son was popular with men and Officer alike. He did his duty fearlessley and died as he lived, as a soldier, for his country.”
His father served as a bosun on HM ships, Arnold, EYR, Cyril, ETR and Rueben Hodgson in the Merchant Navy. They are pictured in the Hull daily Mail, on 22/06/1916. *
