Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 56

W ORLD W AR O NE (1914 - 1918) INCLUDING THOSE WHO DIED LATER AS A RESULT OF THIS WAR

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name ERIC HOBBS (Sec Lt)

Arrive SES 1911

Lef SES 1912

Roll Number 1383 Died 01:07:1916

Set / House E

Where NEAR ALBERT, BELGIUM Serving with 3RD, THE ROYAL WEST SURREY REG

Age 21

Buried Dantzig Alley British Cemetery, Mametz, Picardie

Remembered Dantzig Alley British Cemetery Memorial, Albert, Picardie, France, The St. Edward’s School Chapel (Wooden Plaque) and The Cloisters Stone Memorial

Born Hendon 1895, the youngest of three SES brothers., another of whom died in The Great War. He was only at the School one year, leaving while in the IVth Form. After school he joined a shipping company, Thomas Wilson Sons & Co (The Wilson Line) as an apprentice, dealing with the shipment of iron ore from Hull to Scandinavia. When war was a declared Higgs was in Norway, and immediately he returned to enlist as a Private in the London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) in August 1914. Nine months later he was commissioned in the 3rd Battalion (Special Reserve) Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment and left for France the same year. He joined the 2nd Battalion in October and became the B Company’s Bombing Officer., leading a specialist group of grenade throwers. He was killed on the first day of the Somme Offensive, leading a bombing party, well in advance of his battalion, near Albert in Belgium. This was the long-awaited big push and the Surreys followed the 22nd Manchesters over the top, taking the first line of German trenches. Pressing on, Hobbs and his grenade throwers entered a ‘Fritz Trench’ and in the hand hand fighting that followed, perished. ‘He was universally popular, one of the bravest and most fearless officers’ (His Commanding Officer).