HAROLD RAYMOND

1914 -1918

Harold James Raymond was born in 1896 and was the third son of Harry and Christianna Raymond (nee French) of Finch Hill, Bulmer.  Harold James was the third of a total of eight children born to family, although two younger sisters and a younger brother had died within ten days of each other in March 1906.  At the age of fourteen his occupation is recorded in the 1911 census as a ‘worker on a farm’. As was common at the time his family used his second name “James” rather than his first name “Harold”, and he signed up and appears in the war records as James, but on the Bulmer war memorial as Harold.  Perhaps the formal rather than the family name was felt more appropriate for the war memorial.

He joined up aged nineteen in 1915 before the introduction of conscription and arrived in France on the 25th July 1915.  His older brother Frank Edward also joined up in 1915, followed by his eldest brother Frederick Charles in 1916. Harold James was a Lance Corporal in the 2nd Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment (number 14807).

He was killed in action aged twenty one on the 21 March 1918, the first day of the 1918 Battle of the Somme which continued until the 3rd September.  His war record is amongst the sixty per cent that were lost or destroyed in the intervening years. However, his Soldier’s will does survive in which he says “in the event of my death I give the whole of my effects and property to my mother”.  The record of Soldier’s effects shows that he left a total of ten pounds, eleven shillings and nine pence, and that his mother received a war gratuity of thirteen pounds and ten shillings.

With the death of Harold James eleven months after that of his older brother Frederick who was killed in April 1917 his parents had lost a total of five of their eight children.  The remaining children were Frank Edward who also served and survived, Edith Mabel and Margaret Emma.  Margaret Emma married another Raymond, Percy and named their son Harold Raymond in memory of a much loved big brother.

Like so many others in the Great War Harold James Raymond has no known grave and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial at Faubourg-D´Amiens Cemetery, Arras.

Caroline Cunningham (nee Raymond)

 Deborah Williams (nee Raymond)