| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Sergeant Harry Rendell of the RFA, aged 27, was seriously wounded on 26 Oct 1917 at Polderhoek Chateau during the second battle of Passchendaele and died on the 27th. He is buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Poperinghe, near Ypres in Belgium. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory Medals.
Harry was a regular soldier before the war and served in the 14th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery that gave close support to frontline troops but was itself vulnerable to counter fire. He arrived in France on 23 Aug 1914 and was almost certainly involved in the fighting in France and Belgium that year. He was later transferred to the new 94th Brigade, in “B” Battery, that spent the entire war with 21st Division. As such Harry’s likely involvement can be tracked - the Battle of Loos in Sep 1915, various actions on the Somme in 1916, the Battle of Arras in Apr-May 1917 and then the Third Battle of Ypres after 31 Jul 1917.
Harry was born in Beaminster, Dorset, in 1890, the eldest of six children born to Harry and Emily Rendell. Father Harry was a farm labourer. During the later 1890s the family moved to West Compton and then to Bruton in Somerset before settling in the Sholing district of Southampton, father Harry becoming a general labourer. The 1911 census tells us that Harry Wilfred worked for a dairy as a “milk deliverer” after which time he joined the army.
Harry’s connection with Beverley came through his wife, Edith, who moved here at some time between 1916 and 1917. She lived at 2 Bethlehem Place, off Walkergate with their son Wilfred born the 3 Jul 1914 in Lambeth, London. Harry and Edith married at St John the Baptist Church in Plumstead, Kent the 21 Jan 1916. Edith May Hopper came from West Ella and was born the 18 May 1883, one of eight children in a farm labouring family. In 1911 she was working as a cook at the home of a civil servant in the Board of Education in Camberley, Surrey where she may have met Harry in an area closely associated with the military. She continued living in Beverley up to the Second World War with son Wilfred who worked in a fishmonger. She died in 1965 in the Bridlington area.
Harry is remembered on the Hengate War Memorial. He is also on St Mary’s Roll of Honour as “Herbert W. Rendell”. His medals and photographs are part of an exhibition at the Lijssenthoek Cemetery in Belgium.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |