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Harry Horace Hayes

Rank: Bandsman

Lifetime: 1887-1915

Hayes

The Helles Memorial on which Bandsman Horace Harry Hayes is commemorated.

Bandsman Harry Horace of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers died at Gallipoli on 30 November 1915. He has no known grave but is commemorated on the Helles Memorial.

The Hayes family lived at Clennon (now 10), St John’s Rd, Hampton Wick. According to his obituary in The Surrey Comet dated 15 January 1916, Harry had served in the army as a bandsman in India for three years before the war.

According to his obituary, Harry came from a military family. His father,Ernest Nethercoat Hayes, had been a Sergeant Instructor in the Royal Fusiliers before becoming a park constable at Hampton Court Palace. In the First World War his father rejoined his old regiment and was promoted to the rank of Captain. His older brother, Sergeant William Henry Hayes, also served in the same regiment as his father and Harry. Harry’s obituary reports that his elder brother had also been killed in France. Like Harry, his brother, Sergeant WH Hayes, has no known grave being commemorated merely on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

Harry’s regiment had been one of the first to land at Gallipoli as part of an ill conceived mission to remove Germany’s Ally, Turkey, from the war. Harry died in November from exposure before the Allied troops were evacuated from the peninsular in January 1916.

The first phase of this Project is to gather information about the men commemorated on the Hampton Wick War Memorial who fought in the Great War, also known as World War I, WWI or the First World War.

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