1st (Home) Service Garrison Battalion, Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment
Private Hamblett was an early war volunteer, who never saw service abroad.
Cecil James Bradley Hamblett was born at Kineton, a hamlet near Guiting Power in 1895 and was one of three children born to Samuel Hamblett (1857-1937) and his wife Sarah Ann (1857-1937).
Sarah’s maiden name was Bradley and she had previously been widowed as Sarah Ann Shepherd, marrying Samuel Hamblett in 1892.
In 1901 the family lived at Guiting Power, when Samuel Hamblett was a butcher and by 1911 they had moved to Lower Guiting and the census records that Sarah Hamblett was a ‘butcher ’s assistant’ obviously helping in the family business.
Fortunately, at least part of an Army Pension Record has survived for Cecil, which reveals some details of his relatively short Army service. He volunteered for Army service, for the duration of the war, at Cheltenham on 8 July 1915. He was then aged 20 years and five months and appears to have become a butcher, like his father.
His Attestation Form notes previous service of six weeks with the 10th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, before being discharged as medically unfit. This time he was accepted and posted to the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Glosters, with the number 23328.
On 24 March 1916 he transferred to the 1st (Home Service) Garrison Battalion of the Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent) Regiment and given a new number, G/13779. This was formed at Rochester in March 1916.
There is some evidence (in Soldiers Died in the Great War) that he may have been part of a batch of men from the Glosters who transferred to this battalion.
On 3 March 1917 he was transferred to Class W of the Army Reserve. Class W had been introduced in June 1916 for all those soldiers whose services were deemed more valuable to the country in civil rather than military employment. They were not paid by the Army and not allowed to wear uniform but were subject to immediate recall to ‘the Colours’.
Cecil’s pension file notes state that he was ‘liable to be sent a statutory order on 6 December 1917 to present himself for medical re-examination under the Military Service Review of Exemptions Act 1917’. He must have duly presented himself and this resulted in his discharge from the Army with immediate effect as ‘being no longer physically fit for war service’.
The underlying health reasons behind his discharge are not known and unusually a recently released Pension Record Card makes no mention.
It can be surmised that they were seen as being related to his Army service as when he died, at home, on 20 May 1921, aged 26 he was considered by the then Imperial War Graves Commission as a casualty of the Great War.
The Gloucestershire Echo of 20 May 1921 carries a Death Notice. Private Cecil James Bradley Hamblett now lies in the churchyard of St Michael, Guiting Power, where a standard CWGC headstone marks his grave.
Researched by Graham Adams 20 May 2021