Stead, Robert Bernard

BORN DRIFFIELD 1897. ENLISTED HULL. SON OF RICHARD & JULIA STEAD. RICHARD CONWAY STEAD, ASC ALSO SERVED.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE ROBERT BERNARD STEAD 10/1172. Born 1897 in Driffield, East Yorkshire Robert was the second of four children to Richard and Julia Stead of 46 Clarendon Street, Spring Bank, Hull. A Bricklayer before the war, Robert enlisted at City Hall on 23rd February 1915 and was immediately sent to the 10th Battalion training at various barracks around Yorkshire. He saw it all. Egypt over the winter of 1915; the Somme throughout that awful summer and autumn of 1916; the slaughter at Oppy Wood; the German Spring Offensive; Ploegsteert Wood…..Robert was there, and according to his records, came through it all without a scratch. He wasn’t quite the last of those Originals standing, but so many of the men he had trained with at Hornsea, Beverley and Ripon in those early days had been killed or seriously wounded, and to have escaped without any physical injury was a rare thing indeed. It wasn’t the war that killed him. Robert caught Spanish Flu and died in hospital in Boulogne on 11th November 1918 as the guns stopped firing and four years of slaughter abruptly came to an end. His effects were returned to his mother in Hull- a gold ring, razor, disc, cigarette case, match box cover, wallet, letters and photographs- and Robert was buried at Terlincthun British Cemetery. He’d just scraped into adulthood, a man of 21. An interesting footnote here is that the army “Certified that death is attributable to exposure whilst on Military Duty” hence Richard and Julia Stead received their son’s War Pension. This wasn’t always the case. The War Office tried to wriggle out of payment if a soldier contracted The Flu AFTER the Armistice. When Alfred Bell, a returning soldier who died of Spanish Flu a few days after returning home, the Army insisted he had caught it whilst over-celebrating the Armistice and refused his widow the pension.
Thanks to Carol Henderson for her research on Mr Bell 13/7/2013..