Harry was born in Driffield, in 1891. He was living with his grandmother Emma Duggleby in Walkington; he was working at that time as a general labourer at the Whiting works.
He enlisted on 11th December, 1915 and died just 7 months later after being shot in the head during the Battle of Delville Wood on the Somme on 18th August, 1916.
He is buried in the Corbie Communal Cemetery near Amiens, France. A grave in Walkington churchyard hints at other tragedies in the family, as it commemorates Emma’s husband, John, dying in 1874 aged 37, four children who died in infancy and another son Walter who was 2nd engineer on S.S.Westbourne died at sea in 1890 aged 27. Emma was to outlive them all dying in 1933. We can speculate that Harry had come to live with his
grandmother to keep her company. The Battle of Delville Wood was one of the twelve battles that made up the Battles of the Somme; it began on 15th July 1916 and did not end until 3rd September 1916. It began as part of the Battle of Bazentine Ridge. Delville Wood was on the extreme flank of the attack on Bazentine Ridge and by July 14th the British had reached the southern end of the wood which for the next six weeks would be at the north end of the British line. Delville Wood was a 156 acre forest of oak and birch and dense hazel thickets. It was broken up by grassy gaps, but artillery bombardments filled these craters with fragments of trees. The northern end of the wood dipped down towards the German lines, making it easy for them to reinforce the woods. Attacks continued throughout July
and by August the Germans had been slowly pushed back until August 30th when they made a counter attack, and it was not until 8th September that Delville Wood would be cleared. The wood remained on the front line until the Battle of Flers-Courcette which saw the Germans pushed back by 2,000 yards.
