13th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
Hugh Jones was born at Lydney on 21 December 1888, the son of William and Jane (Minnie) Jones, who in 1911 were living at The Moorlands, Lydney. He had one elder sister (Nora) and younger twin sisters Kathleen and Dorothy. Latterly the family home was at The Uplands, Lydney.
William Jones was a builders’ merchant and ship-owner and at one time was a magistrate and Chairman of Lydney Rural District Council. Hugh was educated at Wycliffe College, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. According to his entry in Wycliffe and the War he was a boarder in School House from 1902 to 1905 and was awarded colours for both cricket and football. He was also awarded the house prize for ‘gentlemanliness and kindness’ by the vote of his fellow students. After leaving school he spent a year at a shipping office in Bristol before joining his father’s business at Lydney Docks as a clerk.
Hugh enlisted in the Army, for three years with the Colours, on 26 September 1914, given the number 14898 and posted to the 12th (Bristol’s Own) Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, where he joined ‘C’ Company. On 1 December 1914 he applied for a commission, stating a preference for the 13th (Forest of Dean Pioneers) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment. His former Headmaster at Wycliffe College (G W Sibley) confirmed that he had ‘attained a good standard of education’. He was recommended on 19 December and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on 28 February 1915.
Promotion to Lieutenant followed in May 1915 and to Captain in August of that year.
He arrived in France on 4 March 1916. The 13th Glosters saw action at the Battle of the Somme and on 21 October 1916 the Gloucestershire Echo reported the award of a Military Cross (Wycliffe and the War states the award was on 3 September 1916). The citation read: ‘For conspicuous gallantry during operations. While clearing trenches with his company after an attack the enemy opened a heavy bombardment. He displayed the greatest courage whilst standing in the open under shell fire for two hours assisting his men to get into safety. Later he went by himself, under heavy shell fire and fetched two stretchers for his wounded’.
Another Captain wrote of this action: ‘ Hugh was in charge of the company one night, when the Germans put up a terrific gas shell barrage. Some of his men having lost their way in their gas helmets, Hugh got out of the trench at very great risk, and by flashing his torch and pushing and pulling them along, he got them all back to the trench with only two fatalities. Then he walked over the open to an artillery dug out and brought back stretchers’.
Hugh was reticent to acknowledge his award and wrote to his family ‘Please don’t shout about it’.
The battalion was located in the Ypres Salient when, in July 1917 Hugh Jones was slightly wounded. He recovered and on 27 March 1918 the battalion was back on the old 1916 Somme battlefield, near to Maricourt, where he was wounded again. He had been hit by machine gun bullets through the muscles in the thigh of the left leg, which resulted in fluid in the knee joint and paralysis for a three week period and also had a bullet through his right thigh. He was sent to the 8th Red Cross Hospital (also known as Baltic Corn Exchange Hospital) at Boulogne on 29 March and repatriated to The London Hospital, Whitechapel on 1 April 1918. At some point he was sent for recuperation to the Officers’ Auxiliary Hospital, Parc Warn, Swansea, from which he was discharged, his wounds having healed on 18 June 1918. He returned to his unit on 10 July 1918.
At the very end of October Hugh was struck down by influenza and was evacuated to Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham on 2 November, where he died from resulting pneumonia at 4.20am on 10 November, aged 29.
He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Lydney, where a stone cross, bearing the regimental badge of the Gloucestershire Regiment marks his grave. Wycliffe and the War contains a dozen tributes from his fellow officers, friends, Old Wycliffians, and ministers of religion, all of whom held him in high esteem.
In his book, The Final Over: The Cricketers of Summer 1914 the author, Christopher Sandford, notes that chronologically Hugh Jones was the last first class cricketer to die in the Great War. On 6 July 1914 he went out to bat for Gloucestershire, away to Worcestershire on what was his one and only first class appearance. A freckled, sturdily built character with a thatch of straw coloured hair, he had achieved an ambition to play in a county cricket match and briefly batted in partnership with the great Gilbert Jessop. His contribution was modest, scores of 11 and 0 respectively in his two innings. He was then content to play cricket a regimental level, enjoying a reputation as ‘a fiercely aggressive attacked of all kinds of bowling; an ever willing would be leg spinner, who, alas, rarely caught his captain’s eye’.
Researched by Graham Adams 17 April 2016 (revised)
Photo from Wycliffe and the War.