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World War One - Sergeant Harry Bailey

Sergeant Bailey was probably numbered among the thousands who died not because their wounds were inevitably mortal, but due to delays in treatment or a lack of medical facilities. It may have been loss of blood which weakened him fatally, or the infection of his wounds, a common cause of a wounded soldier’s death.

His platoon commander Alan Wentworth Chadwick was in fact Hampshire-born, son of a clergyman-schoolmaster of Basingstoke: he was just three years Harry Bailey's senior. He served with distinction right through to the end of the war, ultimately rising to the rank of Major. However, his experiences affected him deeply and after the war, having received an inheritance, he wandered the world searching for the meaning of life. He became the disciple of a Hindu guru in Madras and lived out the rest of his life there.

From the Evesham Journal and Four Shires Advertiser, May 27th 1916 -

When Harry Bailey enlisted in 1914, the Evesham Journal Roll of Honour published his regiment as the Warwickshire, undoubtedly because as he joined the army at Warwick he initially entered that regiment's ranks.

By the time he went to France on 15

December 1915, he was in the ranks of the 11th Battalion (Pioneers) of the Royal Hampshire Regiment.

The Pioneers did not typically take part in organised attacks but their work was often extremely dangerous. A Pioneer battalion marched with or in advance of an army or regiment with spades, pickaxes etc., to dig trenches and clear and prepare the way for the main body. They also laid the defensive barbed wire entanglements and it was while Harry was doing this that he was shot. The batallion war diary (see below) records only one death for April 30th, that of Harry’s cousin Jack Thornett, so very probably Jack was the man that Harry was trying to rescue when he was wounded.