Hugh Irving St John Hartford BA

• Matriculated: 1901

• Born: 11 January 1883

• Died: 22 October 1914

• Regiment: Cheshire Regiment

• Grave/Memorial: Le Touret Military Cemetery Memorial: Panel 13

Family background

b. 11 January 1883 in Conway, as the only child of Major Irving St John Hartford (1842–93) and Frances Catherine (née Fleming) (1853–86); married 1882.

Hartford’s grandfather, Captain Augustus Henry Hartford (1802–90) (50^th Regiment) and father (22^nd Regiment) were professional soldiers and landowners whose home was originally at Rose Court, Portarlington, Co. Laois, Ireland. Irving St John became a Captain on 1 May 1867 when he transferred from the 2^nd West Indies Regiment, and he resigned his commission on 26 July 1883, shortly after his marriage, when the Battalion was stationed on Jersey. By 1891, after the death of his wife about five years previously, he was living with his son and unmarried sister Emily (b. c.1850; place and date of death unknown) in Segrwyd Hall, Llanhaeadar, Rhuthun (Ruthin), near Denbigh, Denbighshire (two servants), which they probably rented from the Townshend-Wickham family.

Hartford’s mother was one of the two daughters of Dr William Fleming, JP (c.1800–89), of Rowton Grange, Cheshire, very near the village of Christleton, Cheshire. He became an MD in 1871 and a Master of Surgery in 1872, both at Queen’s University, Belfast. He left a personal estate of under £45,000 and had been wealthy enough to afford a governess, cook, coachman and four other servants.

Hugh’s wife was Dorothea Ramsey (née MacArthur) (1881–1970) (m. 1905), Sutton, Surrey. Her later married name was also Hartford, after her marriage in 1919 to Major Irving Henry Bidby Hartford, AFC RAF (1890–1980), Hartford’s first cousin (the son of Dr Henry William Hartford [1864–1906], Hartford’s guardian and his father’s brother). In 1911, the couple and their daughter were living in Ireland, where Hartford’s Regiment was currently serving, at 1, Chichester Park, Clifton, near Belfast, Co. Antrim (three servants).

After Dorothea’s second marriage, the couple lived at Barnfelde, Rossett, Wrexham, Denbighshire (about 20 miles away) and Barton, New Milton, Hampshire.

Hugh was the father of Yvonne Hermione Barbara (1910–97). In 1949 she was gazetted Flight Officer in the WRAF.

 

Education

Hartford attended Wellington College, Berkshire, from 1896 to 1901 and matriculated at Magdalen as a Demy on 14 October 1901, having taken Responsions in Hilary Term 1901. He took the First Public Examination in Trinity Term 1902 and for the next two years read for a Pass Degree (Groups B1 [English History], A2 [Greek and Roman History], and B2 [French Language]). He took his BA on 9 July 1904. President Warren wrote of him posthumously: “Good looking, capable, of excellent sense and temper, he was especially devoted to his College, and very popular.”

 

Military and war service

After graduation, on 14 November 1903, Hartford was commissioned Lieutenant in the 4^th (Volunteer) Battalion, the Hampshire Regiment (Territorial Forces). But he then transferred to the 1^st (Regular) Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, his father’s old Regiment, which was part of 15^th Brigade in the 5^th Division. Here, he was given a Regular Commission as 2^nd Lieutenant on 3 December 1904 and promoted Lieutenant on 9 January 1906, when the Battalion was stationed at Lichfield. In September 1909 the Battalion moved from England to Victoria Barracks, Belfast; it then went to Dublin on 9 August 1910, and to Londonderry in January 1913, training and keeping the peace “in aid of the civil power”.

 

 

On the outbreak of war, when Hartford was a serving officer, the Battalion absorbed officers and men from the 2^nd Battalion (which had been stationed in India) and 565 reservists. It arrived at Belfast docks on 14 August 1914, disembarked at Le Havre on 16 August, rested for a day, and arrived by train at Le Cateau-Cambrésis, south of Mons, on 18 August. After three days’ rest at Pommereuil, it marched 27 miles and arrived at Gommégnies, near Mons, on 21 August – the Battalion, it should be noted, had been trained in peacetime to march up to 35 miles a day. On 22 August it was east of Le Boussu, to the south-west of Mons, and on the next day it dug in astride the Mons road facing north-east and north-west. On 24 August it was sent south-west to the Élouges–Audregnies road on the left flank of the 5^th Division, where, together with the 1^st Battalion, the Royal Norfolk Regiment, and 119^th Battery, Royal Field Artillery, it held up the German IV Corps for four hours, thus preventing it from pursuing the rest of the Division as it retreated south-south-westwards. During the withdrawal phase, which began at 14.30 hours, the Battalion suffered particularly heavy casualties killed, wounded and missing, with only six officers, one warrant officer and 199 men surviving out of its initial strength of 27 officers, one warrant officer and 933 men. Hartford survived because, as the officer responsible for looking after Battalion reinforcements when they arrived from England at their overseas base in France, he took no part in the rearguard action.

The depleted Battalion then retreated south-south-westwards, via Eaucourt, Pontoise, Crepy, Nanteuil-le-Handoun, Montgé and St Germain and arrived at Gagny at 21.00 hours on 4 September. With ‘B’ Company as its nucleus, the Battalion was gradually re-formed. Hartford and 90 men joined it at Gagny at 16.00 hours on 5 September, and on 6 September, the day that marked the start of the German retreat north-eastwards, the re-formed Battalion began an advance in order to take part in the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne.

 

 

After crossing three disputed rivers – the Grand Morin, the Petit Morin and the Marne – the Battalion traversed the Aisne on 14 September during a dark night, in heavy rain, using rafts that carried 12–14 men, two days before the start of the Battle of the Aisne (when it was reinforced by eight more officers) and one day before Hartford was promoted Captain.

During the battle, the Battalion held the villages of Missy and Ste Marguérite, at the foot of the Chivres Spur (14–16 September), and Le Mesnil hill (17–25 September). It then marched to St Marguérite (26 September–1 October), and then, after the battle, north-west from Droizy (3 to 7 October) before travelling by bus, train and on foot via Abbeville and Béthune to the village of Festubert, where it went into the trenches on 12 October. On 13 October it suffered 68 casualties killed, wounded and missing while attacking the village of Rue d’Ouvert and then spent two nights in the trenches. On 17 October 248 reinforcements arrived and at 18.15 hours the Battalion finally captured the village of Violaines, just over a mile west-north-west of La Bassée, where, for the next five days, it took part in heavy fighting, especially on 20–21 October during failed attempts to capture La Bassée.

Although the Divisional Commander wanted to withdraw the exhausted Battalion to a more defensible position, its new and inexperienced Commanding Officer – the Battalion had seven in October 1914 – objected so strongly that it stayed in position to the east of the village. In the small hours of 22 October 1914 Hartford and his Company were ordered into no man’s land to dig a trench nearer the German front line. This would have been a suicidal task in daylight, but as there was thick fog, the Company piled arms and began to dig away, covered by pickets whose duty it was to warn of an enemy approach. The Germans must have heard the digging for they attacked en masse with fixed bayonets at 05.10 hours, forcing the Company to fall back in disorder as they had no time to unpile their arms and had to fight with their entrenching shovels. Hartford was seen going along the road and then in the support trenches, but after that he was never seen again. Virtually the whole Company, including all its officers, was lost, and by the evening of 22 October the Battalion had lost over a third of its remaining 600 men killed, wounded and missing, including Hartford, aged 32. Its senior surviving officer was Lieutenant J.L. Frost of ‘D’ Company, the only officer to have landed with the Battalion on 16 August 1914. Hartford has no known grave and is commemorated on Le Touret Military Cemetery Memorial, Panel 13, on Christchurch Priory War Memorial, Dorset, and on a plaque in the Lady Chapel of St James’s Church, Christleton, near Chester. On 17 September 1980, Hartford’s daughter Hermione donated his medals to the Cheshire Military Museum in Chester Castle, where they are displayed in a frame together with his World War One Memorial Plaque and Scroll. He left £22,296 11s. 3d. and his widow received a pension of £100 p.a. with effect from 15 February 1915; his daughter received a pension of £18 p.a. with effect from the same date.

 

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

Printed sources:

 [Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 34, extra number (5 November 1915), p. 18.

 Clutterbuck, i (1916), p. 176.

 

Archival sources:

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 2.

OUA: UR 2/1/45.

WO95/1571.

WO339/6077.