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Pte Harry Douglas Blake
British Army 10th Battalion Royal Fusiliers
from:Woodford
(d.8th Dec 1915)
Harry Douglas Blake was the Son of Dr Edwin Henry and Adeline Maude Blake, of The Cottage, Sible Hedingham, Essex. He was a day boy at Bancrofts and grew up in a household with his mother and father and older brother Gerald and younger sister Irene. His uncle was also an Old Bancroftian and veteran of the Boer War – Dr P R Blake. He was also the cousin and close friend of Robert Dunham Tibbs - Harry’s mother being Robert Tibbs’ aunt. The boys were the same age and would spend time in each other’s houses in their youth. Harry lived with his family at ‘Hillside’ Stag lane, Buckhurst Hill. It was here that his father died in 1906. At school Harry played inside right for the school’s football eleven achieving his colours in in the 1908-9 season. Harry was also a reasonable middle order batsman for the cricket first eleven and capable swimmer in the annual inter-house swimming contests. His chief interest however was Athletics where he was with the likes of Leonard Alfred Whillier on the committee organising the annual games. The Spring of 1909 brought several athletic laurels. First he was victorious in the crosscountry race for his House that took its course from the school through the forest to High Beech and back. Then came the Athletics Championship on Saturday May 8th 1909. As the Bancroftian reported. No mean feat, all competed for on the same day in the kit of the Edwardian boy athlete. We are fortunate indeed to have these triumphs and particularly that of his second place in the Mile (Open) immortalised on film. Otherwise Harry played his full part in the school, appearing in plays such as the Merchant of Venice where he played Salanio the friend of Antonio - Frederick Stephen Boshell and Bassanio - Percy Montague Phillips. That same year 1909 Harry passed his matriculation in the Second Division and left school for a job in the City. Mother and sister Irene were to move to Eastbourne where they opened a guest house.
On the outbreak of war Harry enlisted straight away in the 10th battalion the Royal Fusiliers which was called the ‘Stockbrokers battalion’ as it was predominantly made up of new recruits from the City professions. They initially mustered in the Colchester area as part of Kitchener’s New Army then in the following Spring in the midst of training transferred to Salisbury Plain. So full of talent was the battalion, that questions were asked in the House of Commons suggesting it be used as a reserve from which young officers could be commissioned en masse to make good the officer losses of 1914. The battalion’s main strength landed at Boulogne and Harry with them on the 31st July 1915, concentrating around Tilques, near St Omer. From September to the end of 1915 elements of the Battalion were put into the line in the vicinity of Foncquevillers (Funky Villas as it became known to the British Tommy). The village overlooked the German lines around the village of Gommecourt that would feature so heavily in the fighting of the 1st July 1916 on the opening day of the Somme battle. The work was arduous and dangerous, repairing trenches, hewing timber from nearby woodland, digging out trenches constantly as the increasingly wet weather caused them to subside and the intermittent shelling blew them apart. In the front line or in the service trenches which led to them snipers kept up a desultory fire picking off those too exposed for safety. It was here as December closed in Harry met his end. Not as far as can be told in a large planned assault upon the enemy, not on a sprint between the lines taking full advantage of his athletic prowess but in the wet and mud on the 8th December 1915. That his body was recovered suggests his being hit by a sniper’s bullet or lethal shrapnel. His uncle hearing the news wrote to his old school.
