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Sgt. Herbert Lesley Mullett
British Army Essex Regiment
from:Watford, Herts
My grandfather, Herbert Mullett was captured on the morning of the Spring Offensive 21st of March 1918 on the Somme. He was wounded and hospitalised then moved to Parchim. He was repatriated in early 1919. He was just 19 when he was captured. Over 500 of his mates, including his Captain, who he was alongside as he died, died that morning. He was one of only 5 survivors, he was told later in hospital, all wounded.
He was unable to do military service in WW2, so volunteered, firstly as an ARP in charge of a stretcher party and then with the Red Cross. He was with the first contingent of the Red Cross sent into Bergen Belsen in April 1945, not that far from Parchim. He had many stories of his time in the trenches but was very quiet about Bergen Belsen, more shocked by that experience than anything he experienced on the Somme. I donated many of his artifacts to the Imperial War Museum, who displayed a watch he acquired in Bergen Belsen as part of their Holocaust collection. Unbelievably, he was cheerful and positive right up to his death in 1965, from his exposure to being gassed in 1918. He told me, on his deathbed, that he had seen more dead bodies than I had had hot dinners.
I painted a portrait of him from a photograph taken of him to record his promotion to Sergeant in 1917. He was based near Warminster, in Wiltshire, at the time.
