Private GEORGE BLAKE

Harry was the eldest son of Harry, a labourer, and Alice Blake who were living at Park Corner, Odiham, in 1916. His two younger brothers, George, a Private in the 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment and William, a Private in the 1st/5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, had been killed in action only weeks before Harry was also to lose his life

Harry enlisted at Basingstoke and joined the regular Army in the 2nd Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment and first entered the Asiatic theatre of war on 6 November 1914. The Battalion had landed at Fao, in the Persian Gulf and became part of the Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’. In April 1916 the Anglo-Indian Battalion was in the garrison town of Kut-el-Amara, where they were under siege for 147 days in all, finally surrendering to the Turkish forces on 29 April.

On 6 May 1916 11,800 captured troops began a march from Kut-el-Amara on to prisoner of war camps in Anatolia, Asia Minor. Treatment by the captors was brutal and 4250 died on the journey. Harry, who died on 13 September 1916, would have been one of the 4250.

He was awarded the 1915 Star, the British War Medal 1914-20 and the Victory Medal 1914-19. He is buried in the Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery.