J. Rogers
Private, Hampshire Regiment, 2nd Bn.
Service no. 27971
Died on 6 May 1918, aged about 22.
Remembered at Remembered at Cinq Rues British Cemetery, Hazebrouck, Nord, France

Chris Burge writes:

Joseph Rogers, born in Lambeth in 1896, was the youngest of six siblings. He was baptised together with his two-year-old brother Edward on 16 December at St Stephen’s Church, South Lambeth. His parents, Frederick James and Annie Maria (née Seeds) Rogers, gave the family address as 18 Beech Street, off Dorset Road, Stockwell, and his father worked as a ‘carman’. By the time of the 1911 census there had been four additions to the Rogers family and Joseph was now one of ten children whose ages ranged from eight to 21. Joseph’s father now worked as a ‘fitters labourer’. Three of Joseph’s brothers worked in various jobs for the London & South Western Railway and two of his sisters worked as packers, one in a chemical factory and another in a preserves factory. Joseph, 14, worked as a ‘printers boy’. The 12 members of the Rogers family lived in four rooms at 18 Beech Street, a property which also housed another family of six in four other rooms. 

By the outbreak of war in 1914, both of Joseph’s older sisters had married. His brother Edward had married in 1913 and had two children when he was conscripted in May 1916. Because he had longstanding health problems, Edward was placed on the Army Reserve and became a worker at Vickers munitions factory in Erith, Kent. 

Joseph was conscripted towards the end of 1916 and served only in the 2nd Hampshire once in France in 1917 and in 1918. The 2nd Hampshire were present at the Arras offensive in 1917 and at 3rd Ypres, notably in August and October 1917. In March 1918 they were still in the Ypres Salient but were moved south in early April when the enemy offensive between Ypres and Bethune threatened the import centres of Armentières and Hazebrouck. The situation was only stabilised by the end of April when they were digging the reserve line around La Motte, some three miles to the south of Hazebrouk. A tour of duty in forward positions between the 6 and 13 May was described as ‘quiet with few casualties’. Enemy planes had overflown the nearby Bois d’Aval strafing and dropping bombs each afternoon with little effect, something that might have made Joseph think of his brother Charles who was in the RAF back in England in 1918. With no other detail, the casualties for the 6 May 1918 were listed as ‘3 killed, 3 wounded, 3 sick to hospital, 3 reinforcements, 1 died of wounds’. Joseph Rogers was one of those killed in action on that day.

The Rogers family were still living in Beech Street after the end of the war. Joseph’s father Frederick James Rogers died in 1929, aged 64. Annie Maria Rogers was 81 when she passed away in 1948.

C. Rhodes
Private, Worcestershire Regiment, 14th Bn.
Service No. 26775
Died on 19 September 1918, aged about 28
Remembered at Bac-Du-Sud British Cemetery, Bailleulval, Pas de Calais, France

Chris Burge writes:

Charles Rhodes was born in 1890 and baptised as Charles Ernest at St Peter’s Church, Norbiton in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey on 29 October 1890, when his family was living in nearby Washington Road. The 1891 census shows Charles to be the second youngest of Henry and Rossetta’s seven children. Charles’s mother died in January 1894 at the age of 34 and he lost his older sister, also named Rossetta, who died in 1899 aged 16. Charles’s widowed father Henry and four of the children were still living at Washington Road at the time of the 1901 census: Kate Louisa, 20; Frederick, 15, a van boy; Charles, 13, an errand boy; and schoolboy Frank, 11. Kate had helped bring up her younger brothers and effectively became the head of the family when Charles’s father died in the middle of 1901, aged 43. 

By the time of the 1911 census, Kate was living in Battersea and working as a general domestic servant. Frank had found work as a groom in Patcham, near Brighton. Frederick and Charles were living in one room at 12 Kimpton Road, close to Camberwell Green in southeast London. The property housed six other people in five additional rooms. Charles, now aged 22, was working as a carman for a ‘Fruiterers & Greengrocers’. Frederick, aged 25, completed the census return, giving his own occupation as ‘soldier’ and describing himself as ‘boarder’ which was later changed to ‘head’ of household. 

Charles married Ellen Butler on 15 February 1914 at St Andrew’s, Stockwell Green, opposite Hammerton’s Stockwell Brewery. Ellen had grown up in Stockwell Green and had been working as a domestic servant before her marriage. Frederick was one of the witnesses at the wedding and the couple gave 9 Moat Place as their address. Their daughter Ellen Rose was born on the 23 June 1914 and baptised on 19 August 1914 at St Andrew’s, just two weeks after the outbreak of war when Charles and Ellen were living in Louth Road.

Charles Rhodes’ service number and war gratuity imply an enlistment around December 1915, under Lord Derby’s Group Scheme. He was probably called up some time between January and March 1916. He may not have been considered A1 fit and was either posted initially to the Worcestershire Regiment’s 1st (Reserve) Garrison Battalion or directly to the ‘Severn Valley Pioneers’, the 14th (Service) Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment. The battalion landed at Le Havre on the 21 June 1916. They were on the Somme between July and November 1916, at Arras in April 1917, again on the Somme March to August 1918, and near the Hindenburg Line between September and October 1918. The battalion often worked close to the front line and acted as infantry during the fighting when the 63rd Division were forced to retreat across the old desolate Somme battlefields in March 1918. 

Charles Rhodes’ death in September 1918 was not combat-related and he was buried at Bac-Du-Sud British Cemetery at Bailleulval where a number of Casualty Clearing Stations were based. 

Charles’s Ellen and her daughter Ellen Rose were still living in Moat Place when Ellen Rose married William Crease in 1938. Three years later, Ellen married for a second time in 1941. She passed away in 1967, aged 72. Ellen Crease passed away in May 1971, aged 56.