BORN HULL 1889. SON OF THOMAS WILLIAM HICKS (1848-1934) & SUSAN LAMBERT (1859-1945), OF 43, ARTHUR STREET, HULL (1918 ABSENT VOTERS ADDRESS). SON OF A SHIP FITTER. HIS FATHER WAS BORN IN HOLBORN, LONDON. HE HAD ONE ELDER SISTER, EMILY (1883-1949). WORKED AS A HULL TEACHER, AT A CITY COUNCIL SCHOOL (1911 CENSUS). DESCRIBED AS 5 FOOT, 9.5 INCHES TALL, 33-35 INCH CHEST, 139 LBS WEIGHT, BROWN EYES, BROWN HAIR, GOOD PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT, CHURCH OF ENGLAND RELIGION.
HE ENLISTED AT HULL, ON 5/9/1914. SERVED AS LANCE CORPORAL, 10TH EYR (HULL PALS), IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. AWARDED GOOD CONDUCT BADGE, ON 5/9/1916. KILLED IN ACTION, ON 12/04/1918, AGED 28. HIS ARMY EFFECTS WERE LEFT TO HIS FATHER, THOMAS.
NB: PTE T. W. HICKS, EYR WOUNDED, ROWLANDS AVENUE, ARTHUR STREET.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. L/CPL HENRY HICKS 10/681. Born 1889, the only son of Thomas and Susan Hicks of 43 Arthur Street, Hull. One of the original Pals, Henry was a Teacher before the war and was mobilised in August 1914 having served in the 8th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Territorial Army. His social standing and previous military experience will have given him his rank, and Henry served first in Egypt and then on the Somme and Oppy Wood before being killed in action on 12th April 1914 trying to halt the German Spring Offensive somewhere near the French village of Bethune. His body was never recovered and his name is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial. He was 28 years old. As I have said previously, writing about the original Pals is getting harder and harder when I consider what they must have gone through, what they must have seen and been forced to deal with both physically and mentally, to be so close to the end and yet to not know it. The thought occurs to me that they died knowing the line was broken, that the British Army was in retreat, that their friends and comrades were falling all around them. In short they must have died thinking they were defeated, that the sacrifice of all those familiar faces they’d shared a joke or a fag with, had all been in vain. Heartbreaking.
