The museum is pleased to announce that we now have a very limited stock of brand new Ice Buckets in the shape of the Royal Hampshire Regimental Drum. Please see the link here if you would like to purchase one.
New Memorial to Second Lieutenant Dennis Hewitt VC in Hursley, HampshireA Hampshire Regiment officer who won the Victoria Cross in the First World War has been honoured at a ceremony held almost 100 years to the day after he was killed on the Western Front.
Veterans joined relatives and villagers at the unveiling of a special commemorative stone to Second Lieutenant Dennis Hewitt who won the highest award for gallantry on the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres – better known as Passchendaele – one of the war’s bloodiest engagements.
The ceremony, at Hursley War Memorial, near Winchester, Hampshire, took place in heavy rain grimly reminiscent of that which, a century ago, turned the Flanders battlefield into a quagmire.
Second Lieutenant Hewitt’s nephew, the Viscount Lifford, unveiled the stone. He was accompanied by his sisters, Mrs Lydia Kendon, the Honourable Mrs Belinda Warburton and the Honourable Mrs Flora Henderson, who laid a wreath (please see photograph below).
The Rector of Hursley Church, the Reverend William Prescott, dedicated the stone and Lieutenant Colonel Colin Bulleid, representing the Royal Hampshire Regiment, read the citation which gave details of the action for which Second Lieutenant Hewitt received his Victoria Cross.
The ceremony took place as the nation marked the centenary of the start of the Third Battle of Ypres on 31 July 1917. Second Lieutenant Hewitt, who lived in Hursley, died on the opening day of the three-month-long offensive in which more than half a million Allied and German soldiers were killed or wounded. He was just 19 years old.
Dennis George Wyldbore Hewitt was born in Mayfair on 18 December 1897. He was educated at Winchester College before leaving in 1915 for Sandhurst. He obtained a commission a few months later in the Hampshire Regiment and joined the 14th Battalion. Second Lieutenant Hewitt went out to the Western Front in September 1916 and took part in the later stages of the Battle of the Somme.
On 31 July 1917 the 14th Battalion attacked German positions near the village of St Julien, north-east of Ypres. Second Lieutenant Hewitt’s company had successfully captured their first objective when a shell exploded close to him, setting fire to the signal lights in his haversack and to his clothing. Having put out the flames, and despite his burns, Second Lieutenant Hewitt led his men forward in face of heavy German machine-gun fire and played a major part in the capture of the battalion’s final objective. Having reached it, however, he was shot and killed by a sniper.
Second Lieutenant Hewitt, one of three Hampshire Regiment soldiers to win the Victoria Cross between 1914-18, was initially buried close to where he died, but his grave was subsequently destroyed and his body lost. He is now one of the 54,389 British and Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave commemorated on the Menin Gate at Ypres. The original cross which marked his grave was recovered and is now in Hursley Church.
The Royal Hampshire Regiment veterans who attended the ceremony were: Major Ian Taylor TD, Major Peter Hawker MBE, who also carried the Regimental Standard, and Alan Rockbourne.
Second Lieutenant Hewitt was also honoured at a Victoria Cross Commemoration at Victoria Embankment Gardens in London on 26 June. The Lord Mayor, Andrew Parmley, gave the opening address and the Victoria Cross Citation for Second Lieutenant Hewitt was read by Colonel David Mogg of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, the successor to the Royal Hampshire Regiment.
Lance Sergeant Johnson Beharry, who himself won the VC in Iraq, joined family members in unveiling commemorative stones to Second Lieutenant Hewitt and Captain Thomas Colyer-Fergusson of the Northamptonshire Regiment, who also received a posthumous Victoria Cross for gallantry on the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres.
Further details of the Hampshire Regiment’s involvement at the Third Battle of Ypres and of the regiment’s other Victoria Cross winners during the First World War can be found on the Timeline.
We are grateful to Steve Lee of the Memorials to Valour project for some of the photographs. www.memorialstovalour.co.uk
What did you do in the war, Grandpa?
Many people are interested in tracing their family history, especially those connected to World War 1 as there are so many commemorative events at the moment.
We also get a lot of questions about where to start when trying to find what your family did in their military service. I thought it would be useful to put a quick guide on here in the hope it helps you; most of this is applicable to all regiments not just to the Royal Hampshire Regiment.
Points to remember:
• The Royal Hampshire Regiment was known as the Hampshire Regiment before 1946, and the 37th and 67th of Foot from 1702 to 1881.
• There is NO single list of soldiers that served with the Royal Hampshire Regiment.
• The museum does NOT hold the service records of soldiers – these are available elsewhere (details later in this post). At least 50,000 soldiers served in the Hampshire Regiment in World War 1 just to give you an idea of scale.
• We only hold information on the Royal Hampshire Regiment and their predecessors.
HOW TO START YOUR RESEARCH
• At the very least, you will need the surname and initials or full name of the person you are looking for.
• If you have a date of birth and service number, even better.
1. Are you looking for your own service record?
If so, you need to write to The Army Personnel Centre, MS Support Unit, P&D Branch, Historical Disclosures, Mail Point 555, Kentigern House, 65 Brown House, Glasgow, G2 8EX
2. Did the soldier serve after 1920?
A good starting point is to get their service record – we do not hold these in the museum. The service record should provide details of where and when they served.
Service Records are available from The Army Personnel Centre, MS Support Unit, P&D Branch, Historical Disclosures, Mail Point 555, Kentigern House, 65 Brown House, Glasgow, G2 8EX. or via this contact form . A fee is charged for this service, payable even if no records can be found. Full details are on their website.
From the service record, we can often provide details of exactly what their units were doing at the time. However most soldiers are not mentioned by name in the records unless they received gallantry awards or were injured.
3. Did the soldier serve in World War 1 or before?
All service records were transferred to the National Archives at Kew for soldiers serving between 1770-1920. However, about 80% of these were destroyed during the Blitz in World War 2, so there is no guarantee that your soldier’s records will have survived. The National Archives are open to the public and you can go there in person for research. The National Archives hold details on enlistment, movements, gallantry awards, and World War 1 Medal rolls. They also hold the census records from 1841-1911, birth, marriages and death registers and much more. Their website is here
The National Archives, Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU
• Do you want more information now you have the service record?
If you are sure your family member served with the Royal Hampshire, or the Hampshire Regiment or the 37th or 67th of Foot, and you want some more details on exactly what they were up to, please contact the museum here. Unfortunately we do charge for research undertaken, due to time and staff involved. The charge is currently £40. PLEASE don’t phone us as we cannot carry out research while on the phone!
Tales of the Tigers
Welcome to the new blog from the Royal Hampshire Regiment Museum.
This has been started to keep you up to date with the work of the museum and archives, what we do and how we do it. Anyone is welcome to comment or question, but better still, come along to the museum in Winchester and see us.
To start off, here’s one of our favourite pictures. It’s Fritz, the regimental mascot. Fritz was captured during D-Day, and later bought for the regiment for the sum of £18. The coat he is wearing on this picture is in the museum. Fritz was not an ideal mascot however; he was continually trying to escape and chewed through his kennel on more than one occasion. He did, however, lead the regiment on parades around the region.
