Henry Hill - H.M.S. Aster

Henry Charles Hill (Stoker 1st Class No. 1</18991) - H.M.S. Pembroke
Chatham - Royal Navy

Henry Hill was born on July 16th 1894 and it is believed he attended the Eton Wick Infants' School until at the

age of seven he went to Eton Porny. His parents were Alfred and Sarah and their home was No. I Albert Place, Common Road. When Henry was 10 years old the family moved beyond Dorney Common and he then left the Porny School and his school chums and presumably attended the Dorney Village School.

Sometime later they returned to Eton Wick and lived in 12, Castle View Terrace, Victoria Road. Father, Alf, was very well known and generally referred to as General Hill. Apparently, this was a nickname accorded him on account of being a handyman or tinker and was in no way a military achievement. His workshop was across the road from Castle View Terrace and a few years later it became William Hearn's garage-cum-workshop and bungalow home. This established the rights for later industrial use.

A register in the Kew Public Record Office records Henry as joining the Royal Navy for an engagement of 12 years in April 1913, 16 months before the Great War started. His age was given as 19 years, his height as 5 feet 3¾ inches and his civilian occupation as a cycle fitter.

Initial training was at Chatham Naval Barracks H.M.S. Pembroke before being posted to H.M.S. St. George. Four months later, in April 1914, he joined the battleship King George V. In January 1915, with the war five months old, Henry returned to H.M.S. Pembroke (Chatham) for further training. From May 1915 until July 1917 he served on H.M.S. Aster. The village memorial misleadingly records "H. Hill. - H.M.S. ASTER" perhaps inferring it was on Aster he lost his life. In fact, H.M.S. Aster was sunk on 4th July 1917 and almost certainly Henry was on the ship but survived the tragedy. Another man named Henry Hill was also a crew member, but he was a Devonshire man and 35 years old - he did not survive. On 26th July Henry returned to the familiar shore base of H.M.S. Pembroke.

An Eton Wick lady remembered Henry who she thought may have joined the Navy together with her brother Roland Bond and Arthur Morrell. She said that he was killed in an air raid on Portsmouth. There was in fact no air raid on Portsmouth causing Navy casualties during the Great War, but there was such a raid on Chatham on 3rd September 1917. The raid was by four giant Gotha bombers, each carrying a 300 pound bomb load, at first attacking Margate and causing little damage before altering course for Sheerness and Chatham. About Il p.m. a bomb fell on the Chatham Naval Barracks killing 131 sailors and injuring a further 90. It was with a touch of irony that the village man escaped death at sea in July only to be killed in an air raid a few weeks later. It has not been established that the three young men did join together. Certainly in 1913 when Henry Hill enlisted Roland Bond was only 15 years old. He could have joined, but he was four years younger than Hill. He was amongst the guard of honour when the Eton Wick Memorial was unveiled in 1920 and it is not difficult

to imagine his thoughts as he stood proudly at one corner of the memorial and the haunting call of the Last Post rang out.

Henry was one of Eton Wick's and Boveney's two air raid fatalities of the Great War, both killed by German Gothas, and he was also one of the village's two sailors to lose their lives. The headstones in the Gillingham Naval Plot are very different to most C.W.G.C. headstones, being grey in colour and appreciably larger.

Henry's grave is No. 16 Row 837. He is commemorated on the Eton Wick and Boveney Memorial and on the bronze Memorial Plaques attached to the pillars of the Eton Church gates. He was single and 23 years old.

This is an extract from Their Names Shall Be Carved in Stone  

and published here with grateful thanks to the author Frank Bond.

Henry Hill: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission page.

Henry Hill: The For King & Country page.

Henry Hill: There no record of Henry Hill on the Lives of the First World War as yet.

The Eton Wick War Memorial page on Buckinghamshire Remembers website  

The German Night Raid on February 22-23,1944

The German Night Raid on the Maidenhead / Bray Area

February 22-23, 1944.

The 564 (M) HAA. Troop stationed on Dorney Common

The retaliation air raid on west London shortly after midnight of 22nd/23rd February 1944 by the German Luftwaffe was carried out by 155 aircraft made up of Dornier 217 M’s, Ju 188’s and Me 410 A’s.

This resulted in bombs being dropped on the Maidenhead area - probably the largest bombing attack on this area during the entire war.

At about midnight clusters of flares had been dropped over the Thames and drifted southwest towards the Weybridge area. About this time 15 Messerschmitt Me 410 A’s took off from France. They were quickly picked up by Radar and Mosquito aircraft of 96 Squadron and night fighter action started near the South coast and continued over the Slough, Maidenhead Bray area.

As the raid continued, the Do 217’s joined the Me 410’s and possibly to elude their pursuers jettisoned their bombs on St. Leonards farm, south east of Oakley Green and Bray. Bombs also fell between Bray Police Station and the 8th Fairway of Maidenhead Golf Course. As the attack continued other bombs fell in the Maidenhead / Bray area, one falling in a field leaving a crater 12ft by 5ft diameter and damaging 50 houses. It is thought that this device could have been dropped by the Me 410 engaged by the guns of 564 Battery stationed on SM7 Site, Dorney Common.

The 564 (M) HAA. Troop, stationed on Dorney Common with four 3.72" AA Guns, engaged the Me 410 at 11,800 ft with CS type fire using 42 rounds of ammunition. The battery return states, An Me 410, after engagement by site SM7, banked sharply, jettisoned bombs and flares close by and crashed in flames at Radnage, near High Wycombe.

A witness who happened to see the crash said, "It approached from the south at very high speed, the engines screaming at full throttle, leaving an extremely long trail of flame. Indeed as the aircraft hit the ground, this flame set fire to a nearby hedge".

Battery commander Major Haines sent a guard party to the crash site. They returned to Dorney Camp with one of the plane propellers, a trophy of their victory. A celebration party by the Battery followed their success as Major Haines ordered the NAAFI canteen to be opened.

Do you have any wartime memories of life in and around Eton Wick? Why not add a message to the Guestbook.

Wartime memories - an assortment

The Egg 

For several years after the war there continued to be many shortages of food and goods. In 1948 I applied for work on the Slough Estate at Intertype, manufacturers of American Compositing Machines. After my interview the works personnel manager said that my papers would go to the States and in due course I would then receive, with the States' Compliments, one egg a month. I never did cycle home clutching the egg, but gave it to a workmate. We had hens at home.

(Frank Bond)

Let's join the Wrens

…billetted in Hodgson House, Eton College, during the war while serving with the WRNS…

The washing facilities were at the front of the house facing the road … In summer, with windows open, WRNS could be seen washing (in stages of undress) and a collection of Eton College boys would gather outside at a certain time until they were discovered………..

…………….and then banned ……………

(B Golding)

Officials go Bon Bon

My grandparents kept the Bon Bon shop in Eton selling confectionary, tobacco etc. Shops customarily remained open until around 8pm in the pre-war and wartime days. One day around 1940-41 two well-dressed men entered the shop at closing time and asked for a box of matches, then one penny.

When served they became officious and told Gran she had contravened regulations by selling matches after 8pm. A petty rule that she was aware of although shops could not sell cigarettes after 8 o’clock as it interfered with the Public House trade. Old time petty officialdom ~ even in wartime.

(Alan Smith)

You may be wrong, but You are never right!!

I was in the Army - there was a war on and I soon learnt that to answer back was insolence and not to answer was dumb insolence. You cannot win. I know all soldiers had to read No.1 Orders ~~

I misinterpreted these...

The Sergeant said “Soldier, can’t you read - W.E.F. means With Effect From”

I said “Sorry Sergeant, I honestly thought it meant Week Ending Friday” … Not Funny, Sergeant was not amused.

(Alan Smith)

Camp News... Undesirable living accommodation

We were posted to Dorney. Billets were allocated, but unfortunately the Nissen hut that telephonists and spotters were expected to occupy was in an appalling condition having previously been a meat store; an odour I have never smelt before or since. There was a shortfall of beds so we were given the usual biscuit paliasses on which to sleep on the flagged floor. We could not deter the assorted number of cats from hanging around this hut, but horrible though it all was we just had to make the best of it.

Fortunately for me I was on all night duty, but was horrified when the poor girls trying to sleep in that hut told me of a night of horrors as dozens of mice left their nest under the flagged floor and ran over the beds and pillows and anywhere else they fancied. Helped by the cats continuing their vigil and making many successful catches.

Next morning the Junior Commander came to inspect the hut and ordered the floor to be taken up and it was found that there were literally hundreds of mice nests under the flag stones. We were transferred to share other barrack rooms which became overcrowded and the mice decided to move in with us as well.

(M.Sudsaby –ex 564 Bty.)

London in the blitz

As a school girl in Fulham I found the experience of being in the midst of such mayhem very exciting. Climbing in bombed remains of homes and discovering pieces of bomb shell and shrapnel were considered good finds to use as trade.

The seriousness of the situation only came when empty seats were seen around the class rooms. Walking one day with a friend to the dental clinic we were fascinated to watch a Doodlebug streaming noisily in the sky then the silence as it fell on a target - This time the clinic where we were heading (eight children and 2 nurses were killed) The clinic site is being developed now as luxury riverside apartments

(Margaret Everitt)

Air Raids… Early Fears & Precautions

War had just been declared. I was out on my cycle when the air raid siren sounded the alarm. Until the warning wail became a familiar sound everybody took notice, so I hurried home….

Dad was quite excited and asked me help him fill the bath and buckets with water in case we were bombed. Not a precaution we took later.

(P. Perring)

This away or That away

In 1941 I was a Brownie and we had our shoulder flashes taken off in case a German parachutist caught one of us and would know where he was...

(1st Slough Brownie Pack)

(J Lund)

A Thursday Memory

… Of being thrown out of my bed when the German Luftwaffe dropped a bomb on the wartime ack-ack site on Dorney Common…

Also the day the crew of a lone German plane delighted in some shooting against my Mother as she walked across the fields to meet father from work on a wet Thursday afternoon.

She was striding along, brolly up, oblivious of the plane until a man from the sewage works shouted at her to jump into the ditch…

On returning home I cannot repeat what she said about that little German ‘So-in-So’

(J. Neighbour)

Eton College Bombed 

7.45 am. December 1940… arriving early at the choir school to finish some prep, I found broken stained glass in the quad from the Chapel – the result of a bomb that had badly damaged Saville House during the previous night. Whilst picking some up as a souvenir, I spotted a hole in the paving by the Headmaster's schoolroom and decided to investigate but was prevented from doing so by a master running towards me shouting “Out boy, it’s an unexploded bomb”. Later that day the Bomb Disposal team arrived, but decided they could do nothing. That evening it exploded destroying the schoolroom and part of Upper School.

Old Men forget and are forgotten, but I shall remember this day. - (Henry V.)

I remember

I came to England as a prisoner in January 1946 after the war was over and was in the great camp at Reading. In the springtime 1946 I was transferred to a camp between Maidenhead and Bray. The first time I worked for the farmer Mr Kinross at the Manor Farm was in the summer of the same year. After discharged from the prisoner of war status I stayed voluntary for another year with Mr Kinross on the farm. The Kinross family was so kind to permit me to stay on the farm for another year, a free man. On the 6^th January1951 I finally left England …

(Max Schattke)

These memories were recorded as part of  the Eton Wick History Group's Recall 60 years on project to celebrate the 60th anniversary  of the ending of World War 2.