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OUR WAR MEMORIAL |
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This article was first published by the Pirton Magazine in October/November 2003, and is provided courtesy of the magazine, the editor Derek Jarrett. Further acknowledgments appear at the end of the article.
ALFRED RAYMOND JENKINS
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We
know little about this 'Pirton Hero'. Furthermore there is perhaps some doubt
about his identity as his name on the Memorial is Alfred Raymond Jenkins whereas
the 1901 census records a five year old Raymond Alfred Jenkins; but the reversal
of Christian names does not seem to hide the man. It seems likely that he was
one of five children who lived in or close to Little Green. His father carried
the same name, Alfred Raymond Jenkins, a Stondon man born in 1865 who may well
have been born in Clifton. He was a bricklayer who met and married a Pirton
girl. In 1895 his wife, Elvina, bore him a son, Alfred Raymond, their third
child. He was baptised at St. Mary's on 2nd June of that year. Siblings shown in
the 1901 Census (when Alfred was 5) were Ethel aged 15, Montague 11, Edward, 3,
and Leonard aged 2.
Alfred attended our village school and probably worked on one of the local farms until enlisting in Hitchin as yet another Pirton man who was determined to serve King and Country. He became a Private in the 1st Battalion of the Grenadier Guards; perhaps the only Pirton man to join this regiment. He may have been fighting quite close to Joseph French for both were engaged in the terrible Battle of the Somme and only six days separated their deaths. On the 10th September 1916, fifty one men from the Grenadier Guards were killed in fierce fighting; Alfred was one of them.
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He,
like Joseph French, is commemorated at the Thiepval Memorial in France (Pier &
Face 8D). So we learn of two young men, both born in Pirton, baptised at St.
Mary's, attending our village school, killed within six days of each other on
the terrible battlefields of the Somme and both commemorated at the Thiepval
Memorial.
When the Battle of the Somme finally petered out in mid-November 1916, after four and a half months of slaughter, Britain had suffered 420,000 casualties. Neither side had made any strategic advance.
**Thanks to : Brenda Dawson, Barbara Wilshere, Lynda Smith www.roll-of-honour.com, Jonty Wild www.pirton.org.uk, Michael Newbery and staff at Hitchin Library.
Points of contact are:
Pirton Website Jonty Wild via jontywild@pirton.org.uk
We would like to ask for your help, if you have any information, photographs or artefacts:
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For the remaining men yet to be included in a magazine article. |
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For any new information on those already published or following publication. |
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For men who survived the war. |
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If you have any photographs of soldiers from that war who you believe may be related to Pirton, but don't know who they are |
Please get in touch jontywild@pirton.org.uk
Also if anyone would like copy of any Pirton WW1 war grave or memorial please contact Jonty Wild, digital copies for personal use will be provided free of charge to relatives, photographs can be provided for a small charge.
