Royal Flying Corps & Royal Naval Air Service
Henry Greville Marshall was born at Cheltenham on 9 November 1899 and was the eldest son of Dale Marshall, a consulting engineer and his wife Annie, who lived at 30 Winchcombe Street, Cheltenham.
The couple had eight children, of whom six were surviving at the time of the 1911 Census.
Henry was educated privately for two years before attending Cheltenham Grammar School from 1910 to 1916, leaving to become an apprenticed engineer.
Prior to enlistment, he carried out ammunition work in his father’s firm, Sultan Engineering, before being drafted into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), but attached to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in HMS President, Tregantle, which was a shore storage establishment.
His enlistment into the RFC/RNAS was on 15 February 1918; his length of service was very short as he contracted pneumonia in training and died at the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth on 22 April 1918, aged 18.
A funeral service took place at Highbury Church in Cheltenham and he is buried in the CheltenhamCemetery, where his grave is marked by a CWGC headstone.
He is commemorated on the Cheltenham Town War Memorial and also that at Pates Grammar School.
A photograph of him, as a member of the Grammar School Rugby First XV appeared in The Patesian of April 1916.
His Service Record is preserved at the National Archives reference ADM 188/642/50180.
Researched by Graham Adams 1 February 2013 with an acknowledgement to ‘Leaving All that was Dear – Cheltenham and the Great War’ by Joe Devereux and Graham Sacker.