BORN HULL 1891. SON OF JAMES FRANCIS HEIDRICH (1860-1941) & MARTHA RADFORD FULSTOW (1861-1946), of WEST GARTH, THE LEYS, HORNSEA (PROBATE ADDRESS). HE HAD ONE BROTHER, LEONARD, AND TWO SISTERS, DOROTHY AND MARION. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS. SERVED IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. KILLED IN ACTION, ON 17/04/1916, AGED 25. HIS NAME IS RECORDED ON THE HULL GRAMMAR SCHOOL WW1 MEMORIAL.
Hull Pals Memorial Post: Born in January 1891, Edgar was the second of four children and eldest son of James and Martha Heidrich, of 47 Park Avenue, Hull. Both he and his brother Leonard enlisted for the 10th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, “The Commercials”, 1st Hull Pals, and perhaps tellingly, both changed their surname by deed poll from the Germanic “Heidrich” to “Hyde”, not long after. Employed at Mssrs Wade & Sons Timber Merchants in Hull, Edgar left these shores for America where he worked as a Railroad Clerk with ambitions to become a Fruit Farmer in California. When war broke out Edgar was living in Seattle and Leonard was over there on holiday. Reading in the American papers how men were needed back home, the pair shipped back to their hometown to enlist. 5,000 miles to answer the call of King and Country. Whatever your feelings on the subject of the war, that goes some way to show the depth of patriotic feeling in young men of the day. Edgar’s story is that of the battalion itself: training throughout 1915 at barracks in Hornsea, Beverley and Ripon; then Egypt from December 1915 to March 1916 when they arrived at Marseilles and began the long journey north to the trenches of the Western Front. Leonard’s path was different from that of his elder brother. He transferred to the Royal Artillery and, surviving the war, became a Fitter Staff Sergeant at Woolwich and a career soldier; Edgar went into the trenches at Engelbelmer and never returned. He was killed in action on 17th April 1916, killed instantly by a rifle bullet, and buried in Sucrerie Military Cemetery; he was 25 years old.
