Hart, Richard Ernest

Hull Pals Memorial Post. SERGEANT RICHARD ERNEST HART 11/704. Born in Brough, East Yorkshire in 1894 Richard was the eldest of four children to William and Annie Hart of 3 Park Row, Hessle. Enlisting at Hull City Hall on 9th September 1914, he joined the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. After training throughout 1915 the Pals served in Egypt defending the Suez Canal from the Turks before arriving in France early in March 1916. Richard was promoted to Sergeant in October. He was killed in action on 3rd May 1917 during the fateful attack on Oppy Wood, though he was originally reported as “wounded and missing” which paints a mental picture of a man too badly wounded to crawl back to the trenches dying slowly in No Man’s Land while his comrades were unable to help. It reminds me of a passage in Edwin Campion Vaughan’s book “Some Desperate Glory”:
“From the darkness on all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men; faint, long, sobbing moans of agony and desperate shrieks……Horrible visions came to me with those cries of (men) lying maimed out there trusting that their pals would find them, and now dying terribly, alone amongst the dead in the inky darkness.”
Richard Ernest Hart never received a proper burial; his body was never recovered and his name is commemorated on the Arras Memorial; he was 23 years old.
HIS NAME IS RECORDED ON THE HESSLE ROLL OF HONOUR, ALL SAINTS PARISH CHURCH.