Leamington runner who was killed on Somme

After reading our story about Pte Alexander Billington (Nostalgia, August 29) John Asbourne of Hampton Lucy has come forward with a similar story about his grandfather, who lived in Warwick.

John said his grandfather was born in Shrewley in 1887. At 14 he worked as a groom at a local farm, where he met his wife Rosetta, a domestic servant on a nearby farm. They married in 1909 and had four children, Christopher (John’s father), Florence, Hilda who died when only a few months old, and Frederick.

John Henry was a cross country runner and a member of Leamington Athletic Club. He left the farm and worked in the engineering department of the Great Western Railway in Warwick.

When war broke out in 1914 he joined the army straight away and was a member of the 213th (Leamington) Army Troops Company Royal Engineers. He was involved in laying the network of miniature railway tracks which transported ammunition and stores to the trenches and the big guns.

When the German offensive began in March 1918 he was a member of the force defending the important railway junction at Amiens. He was killed in action on March 30 1918. He has no known grave but is commemorated on a panel in the Pozieres Somme Memorial and on the war memorial in Warwick. He is also remembered on the GWR Roll of Honour on platform 2 at Leamington Station.

After the war his family moved from Beausale to Park Street, Warwick, where Rosetta died in 1953.

John’s father Christopher, who was eight when his father was killed, went on to work for Swallow Sidecars which became SS Cars and then Jaguar Cars after the Second World War. He was a paint shop foreman at its plant in Coventry.