Private JAMES HENRY BUCK

17, Andover Road, Winchester
Service number 3854. 2/4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment
Died of disease, Quetta, India, 13 July 1916

Life Summary

James Henry Buck was born in 1892 in Gibraltar, the fourth child of Tom and Harriet Buck. James, known to family and friends as Harry, came from a military background, but his life was marred by personal difficulties and tragedy. His father died when he was 10 years old and by the time he was 18 he had been admitted to the workhouse in Winchester. James may therefore have viewed the outbreak of war in 1914 as an opportunity to improve his lot and see the world. Instead, he suffered an unpleasant death from disease contracted while fighting with the Hampshire Regiment in Mesopotamia.

Family Background

James’s father, Tom Buck, was the youngest of three brothers and was born in 1863 or 1864 in the village of Rolleston-on-Dove, Staffordshire. Tom’s father, Henry, worked as a gardener. His mother, Emma (née Cryer) had been born in 1835 but she died when Tom was in his early teens. By 1881, when the family was living in the hamlet of Castle Bromwich, near Birmingham, Henry had taken a second wife, Bridget, by whom he had a son and two daughters.

Tom Buck worked briefly as a gardener before enlisting with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC) on 2 January 1883.

James Buck’s mother, Harriett (née Dicks), was born on 24 October 1866 at the Curragh Army Camp in County Kildare, Ireland. Her father, Isaac Dicks (1833-), was a Nottingham-born brickmaker who had married 17-year-old Emma Skidmore in 1852. Given Harriet’s birthplace, it is likely that Isaac later joined the Army, although no records can be found to confirm this. After Isaac’s death, Emma married James Edward and in 1891 the couple were living at 10, Upper Brook Street, Winchester. Emma, then aged 55, was working as lace maker and 41-year-old James as a labourer.

Little is known of Harriett Dicks’s early life. In 1884 she and Tom Buck married at Stoke Damerel, Plymouth, Devon. Tom, by then serving with the KRRC, had almost certainly been posted to the area as Devonport, besides being an important Royal Navy base was also one of England’s foremost garrison towns.

In 1885 Harriett gave birth to a daughter, Harriett Ada (known as Ada) in Stoke Damerel. A son, Robert William, was born the following year at Shorncliffe Barracks, Kent, followed by another daughter, Rose, in Dublin in 1891. Tom Buck was clearly moving around the country a great deal with the KRRC, but by the time of James’s birth in 1892 the family had moved abroad and were living in Gibraltar. Another daughter, Alice, was born in Gibraltar in 1895, but by the time Violet Mary and Amelia Hilda arrived, in 1897 and 1899 respectively, the Bucks were living in Mallow, County Cork, where the British Army had an infantry barracks.

By 1901 the Bucks had moved to Winchester, home to the King’s Royal Rifles Corp depot, and were living at 45, Wharf Hill (no longer standing), probably James’ first Winchester home. Tom’s name does not appear on that year’s census record, but his wife indicated on it that he was serving with the Army in South Africa. Harriett gave birth to her last child, Elizabeth Mary, in 1902. Oddly, despite the family living in Winchester, Harriet had the baby in Mallow. Perhaps she had relatives or friends there and, with Tom overseas, wanted to be close to familiar faces?

The year 1903 was a traumatic one for the Buck family. Five-year-old Violet died in Mallow just a few months after her sister Elizabeth’s birth. Then, on 20 November, Colour Sergeant Tom Buck, who had returned from fighting in the Second Boer War, passed away in Winchester at the age of 39. The cause of his death is not known.

The Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929 shows that on 2 February 1904 the Army paid £12 15s to Harriett and £3 12s 11d to both daughter Ada and son Robert. A week later Harriett received a further £18 4s 2d for her five remaining dependent children.

Harriet remarried in 1908. Her new husband, handyman Arthur Allassandro Mundy, had been born in Winchester in 1883 and was therefore some 16 years younger than Harriett. The 1911 Census records Arthur, Harriett and Elizabeth living with Arthur's mother at 5, Princes Buildings, Middle Brook Street, Winchester. This was one of the most deprived areas of the city with much dilapidated and unsanitary housing. Two of the Buck daughters, Ada and Alice, are recorded on the Census as being in service in London while Rose was working as a servant in Winchester.

For two of the Buck children, however, life was clearly difficult. Amelia, then aged 10, was an inmate of the Royal Victoria Mental Asylum in Wandsworth, London. As for 18-year-old James, he had been admitted to the Winchester Workhouse in Upper Stockbridge Road, adjacent to Oram’s Arbour. On the official workhouse return he is recorded as being born in 1883, not 1892, which would have made him 28. It is not known whether this was an error on the return or whether James, who is listed as a general labourer, needed to increase his age. Quite why he had been admitted to the workhouse is unclear as there is no record of any disability. Perhaps he had fallen out with his stepfather who, after all, was only a few years older, or maybe there was simply no room for him in the family home.

While James had fallen on hard times, his brother Robert was making a career in the Army. He had enlisted in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps as a musician and then, in 1910, married 22-year-old Winchester girl Kate Temple. The following year the couple were living at 3, Alma Road, in Cheriton, Kent. This was the home of the Shorncliffe Barracks where Robert had been born some 25 years earlier.

In 1914 Harriett and Arthur Mundy were living at 17, Andover Road, Winchester (the address then and now) – James Buck’s address in the Winchester War Service Register (WWSR). Among their neighbours in the years leading up to the Great War were young men who would serve with the Hampshire Regiment in the conflict. Albert Francis and his parents lived at 15, Andover Road, while Francis Forder and his mother were at No. 11 until around 1911-12. James Buck and Francis Forder served in the same battalion, though not at the same time. All three men died in the war and are listed on the parish memorials.

Great War Record

According to the WWSR, James Buck enlisted for military service with the Hampshire Regiment in 1915, although no month is given. There is some confusion about which battalion he joined: according to the Regimental Medal Roll it was the 2/4th Hampshires, but the website Soldiers Died in the Great War (SDGW) lists him as serving with the 1/4th Battalion. What happened is that James was initially assigned to the 2/4th Battalion before later being posted to the 1/4th Hampshires as a draft (or reinforcement).

James is not thought to have been with the 2/4th Hampshires when they deployed to India in January 1915. He probably joined up with the unit in India later that year after enlisting in England and then spent the remainder of 1915 training and preparing for active service.

James entered a theatre of war in 1916. Although no records can be found to directly confirm this, his entitlement to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal - which were awarded only to men who had served in a theatre of war - indicate that he must have done. Moreover, the fact that he was not entitled to the 1914-15 Star shows that James did not enter a war theatre in either of those years. We also know that he must have fought in Mesopotamia as this was the only combat zone in which the 4th Hampshires were operating in 1916. Although neither mention James by name, the Hampshire Regiment’s official history and the 2/4th Battalion’s war diary lend weight to this theory. Both contain reports from early 1916 of large numbers of 2/4th drafts being sent to Mesopotamia to reinforce the 1/4th Battalion which had suffered heavy casualties fighting the Turks while trying to relieve the besieged British garrison at Kut-al-Amara.

However, it is not known precisely when James arrived in Mesopotamia. Possibly it was in time to join the 1/4th Hampshires as they attempted, unsuccessfully, to break through to their comrades trapped inside Kut in January 1916. A more likely scenario is that James arrived for the later attempts to relieve Kut in March and April. These proved equally fruitless and the garrison finally surrendered to the Turks on 29 April.

What happened to James Buck once he arrived in Mesopotamia is also a mystery. Presumably, he was either wounded in battle or fell sick. Either way he would have been transported back to India on a hospital ship. One of the few established facts is that James died at Quetta (in modern Pakistan) of enteric fever - or typhoid - on 13 July 1916. He was 24 years old.

Family after the Great War

After the war James’s mother and his stepfather Arthur Mundy continued to live in Winchester. They went on to celebrate 40 years of marriage before Arthur’s death in 1948. Harriett lived on to the age of 96 before her death in Winchester in 1962.

Robert Buck, James’s brother, probably served during the Great War, but no records have been found to confirm this. His wife, Kate, had given birth to a son, Leslie, in Farnham, Surrey, in 1913. By 1939 they were living in Aldershot, Hampshire, where Robert died in December 1950, aged 64. Kate also died in Aldershot, on 18 October 1974. She was 85.

James’s sister Harriet married Herbert Everett, a sailor, in Camberwell, south London, in October 1915. She died in Lancashire in 1965, aged 80. Sister Elizabeth married Sidney Vardy in Southampton in 1923. She, too, lived a long life before dying in 1997 at the age of 95. The three other sisters never married. Rose died in 1928, aged 37, and Violet in 1961 at the age of 64. Despite her afflictions in early life, Amelia lived to be 93 before her death in Southampton in 1964.

Medals and Memorials for James Henry Buck

Private James Henry Buck was entitled to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He was buried at Karachi Cemetery, but according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has no known grave. This suggests that he may have been buried in haste due to the virulent nature of enteric fever. James is commemorated on the Delhi Memorial (India Gate), India (PR. Face 23) – pictured right -and on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester.

Researcher – DEREK WHITFIELD