Rupert Thomas Bennett

Rupert enlisted at Watford as Private 28130 in Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment) and was posted to 2nd Battalion. Rupert was not listed in the Abbots Langley Parish Magazine Roll of Honour until December 1916, at which point the Vicar announced that he had been “Killed in Action”. Rupert died on 23rd October 1916 serving with 2nd Battalion (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) Middlesex Regiment. The battalion was serving on the Somme battlefield and on 20th October moved up to Trones Wood, and from there on to the Front Line at Spectrum Trench on 22nd October. The next day, 23rd October, the battalion attacked the village of Le Transloy, and after much hand-to-hand fighting eventually took their objective - the enemy’s Zenith Trench. In doing so it lost 230 casualties, and it is suspected that it was in this action that Rupert Bennett perished. The action was one of the last to take place in the Battle of the Somme. The weather deteriorated as winter set in and the battlefield turned into a quagmire.

Rupert’s death was recorded in the Abbots Langley Parish Magazine in December 1916: “Rupert Bennett, who had only been in France only a few weeks, was killed in action on October 23rd. His mother, who was ill, only survived the news of his death for two days.”

War Gratuity of £3 and arrears of £3 5s 0d paid to his father.

A Memorial Service was held at St Lawrence Church for the families and friends of all men who had died in the latter half of 1916.

Rupert’s brother, Walter, was killed in action serving with South Staffordshire Regt on 26 Oct 1917. 1917.