Name
Harold William File
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
13/07/1916
22
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Second Lieutenant
The Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment)
7th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 /15 Star, British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
THIEPVAL MEMORIAL
Pier and Face 11 C.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin War Memorial,
Stained Glass Window, Hitchin Boys Grammar School,
St Mary's Church Roll of Honour, Hitchin
Pre War
His father was Mr Edwin File the proprietor of a retail grocery business living at 24, Sun Street, Hitchin and he was his parents' second son. Later their address was recorded as 6 Salisbury Villas, Shorncliffe Road, Folkestone.
Harold was born on the 1st May 1894 and attended the Hitchin Grammar School from 1904-1911. He had a brilliant school record that included obtaining a Foundation Scholarship. By the outbreak of war he was making rapid headway in his career as a clerk in the offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway, having previously worked for P & O of Leadenhall Street in London. An active member of the Old Boys Club, his loyalty to his old school was regarded as one of his most pleasing features.
Wartime Service
He joined the forces early in the war as a Private with the Regimental Number 2352 in the 4th Company of the Honourable Artillery Company and during this period he wrote a history of this unit which was published in the School Chronicle. Later he received a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant and was posted to France arriving there on the 23rd January 1915. He was sent to the 7th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment, but not initially, as it did not arrive in France until the 27th July 1915. The 7th Battalion was in the 55th Brigade, 18th Division, XIII Corps of the 4th Army.
The 18th Division arrived at Trones Wood east of Montauban on the evening of the 12th July 1916, taking over from the 89th and 90th Divisions which had sustained very heavy casualties. The 55th Brigade took over the front-line trenches. General Rawlinson, Commander of the 4th Army and not a man shy of sacrificing soldiers’ lives, had directed that the wood was to be taken at all costs by midnight on the 13th/14th July 1916. The 55th Brigade attacked from the south of the wood commencing at 7.00pm on the 13th July, the instructions to the Royal West Kents being to push through the wood or that part south of the railway. They suffered very heavily from artillery fire going across a sunken road towards Trones Wood.
Harold met his death from a shell burst when he was leading his Company across the wood. The Royal West Kents were cut off at one stage but refused to surrender.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines, Jonty Wild
