4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment
Dick Hewish served less than two months in the Army before being struck down by a fatal illness and did not see any service abroad.
Richard James Hewish was the only son of Richard, an iron turner and Kate Hewish, who lived at 27 Roseberry Terrace, Dursley and was born in the town on 15 July 1899. After attending the Victoria Council School, he joined R A Lister & Co, a prominent Dursley employer, as a mechanic: his father was a foreman at the same factory. He became a keen member of the Dursley Scout Troop, becoming Patrol Leader and played football for a club named ‘The Revellers’. He was a quiet, well liked lad, with many friends.
He was called up for army service on 31 October 1917, when aged eighteen and sent for training to Salisbury Plain. Within weeks he had contacted what the local newspaper described as a ‘malignant fever’; his entry in the De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour states that this was meningitis. He died in Tidworth Military Hospital on 13 December 1917.
His body was returned to Dursley for a military funeral held on 16 December at the Tabernacle Congregational Church, which Dick had attended. A procession then formed up outside, Private Hewish’s coffin having been placed on a wheeled bier, covered with wreaths. Family mourners, volunteer soldiers, Boy Scouts, employees of R A Lister Co, a band, playing The Dead March and a large number of townsfolk followed the coffin to its final resting place in St Mark’s Church burial ground. At the graveside, the minister of the Tabernacle, the Reverend Ives Cater, took the service of interment, which was followed by volleys of rifle fire from a firing party. As the local newspaper commented ‘the reverberating echoes of which brought to some extent the awful sound of war under which so many … gallant soldiers passed away…’ Tributes were placed on his grave; one from female workers at Lister’s which read: In memory of dear Dick from the Victoria Viewing Girls.
Dick Hewish’s grave is now marked by a standard CWGC headstone and he is commemorated on the Dursley War Memorial.
Researched by Graham Adams 1 April 2013