Game Keepers Son Goes to War. Ernest Herod was born in 1897 at Elvaston, & was one of eight children born to Charles Herod, gamekeeper at the castle from the mid 1880s. On the 6th November 1915 Ernest enlisted in the army and was posted to the 29th Royal Fusiliers. At the time he was working as a grocers assistant, possibly for William Brown at Thulston, and for some reason gave his age as 19 years and 1 month, although he was only 18. In January 1916, after basic training, he was sent to France where on the 29th July he was wounded in action & sent back to England. In November of that year he was transferred to the newly formed Machine Gun Corp and in early 1918 was returned to the fighting in France. The Machine Gun Corp suffered the greatest number of losses than any other regiment in WW!, with over 36% of its officers and men being killed, wounded or missing in action. However it seems that Ernest survived the war and was finally demobbed in February 1919. He must have been a good soldier for he was promoted to Lance Corporal in June 1917 and to full Corporal the following year. However his army record wasnt without blemish. In 1918 he was reprimanded for allowing men to remain in bed 10 minutes after Reveille. This probably irked our Ernest for he was reprimanded again the following day for Insolence towards his senior NCO i.e.- retorting, when told that obscene songs would not be allowed to be sung in the section on the route march, that he would sing what he liked. It seems that he never married and died in Derby in 1951 aged 53.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 18:44:40 +0000
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