Private GEORGE SOFFE
8, Upper Stockbridge Road, Winchester
(later 17, St Paul’s Hill - no longer stands)
Service number 4/2471. 1/4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment
Died in captivity, Mesopotamia, between 13 and 26 June 1916
Life Summary
George Soffe, the son of John and Charlotte Soffe, was born in Church Oakley, near Basingstoke, in March 1881. One of 13 siblings, George came to Winchester with his family in the late 1880s and although he later moved away his parents and several brothers and sisters remained in Fulflood. George’s brother Henry was also killed in the Great War. See Henry Soffe biography. Three other brothers served in the war and survived.
The exact date of George’s birth is unclear, but in the 1881 Census, taken on 2 April, his entry states he is less than one month old.
Family Background
George’s father, who was known as Tom, was born in Nursling, near Southampton, on 6 October 1836. His mother was born Charlotte Birch in Winchester in 1847, the daughter of James and Charlotte Birch. Tom and Charlotte married in Winchester in 1866 and quickly began a family. Besides George their children were: Rosa (1867-1940), Alfred (1868-1900), Frank (1869-1934), William (1870-1921), Henry (1872-1916), Constance (1874-1962), Frances (1875-1944), Charlotte (1876-1945), Caroline (1879-), Ernest (1880-1945), Frederick (1883-1939) and Arthur (1884-1954). Other than Alfred, William and Rosa, who were born in Winchester, and Frank who was born in Southampton, all the Soffe children were born in Church Oakley.
In 1871 the Soffes were living in Twyford, near Winchester, with George’s father Tom employed as a gardener. Shortly afterwards the family moved to Church Oakley where Henry was born in 1872. The Soffes remained in the village at least until 1884, when Charlotte gave birth to Arthur. By 1891 they were living at No. 2 Worthy Road Cottages, near Headbourne Worthy rectory on the outskirts of Winchester. According to that year’s census George and his brothers Frederick and Ernest were working as domestic gardeners like their father. Brother Henry, meanwhile, was employed as a groom and George’s 17-year-old sister Constance as a kitchen maid.
We know little of George’s education; the 1891 Census, compiled when he was 10 years old, fails to state whether he was at school or not. However, given that his other brothers went to school and that compulsory education from age five to ten had been introduced in 1870, it must be assumed that George also attended school, probably in Church Oakley.
In 1895 the Soffe family moved to 8, Upper Stockbridge Road, Winchester. The house was renumbered as 17, St Paul’s Hill after the Great War but no longer stands. By 1901 Tom Soffe was a self-employed jobbing gardener and three of his sons - George, Frederick and Arthur - worked for him. Caroline, the only other of the Soffe children still at home, was employed as a domestic nurse. Sisters Rosa and Charlotte had moved to London where they were working as a nurse and a cook respectively in a large house in Hanover Square.
George’s eldest brother Alfred, who had also moved away, died in Bromley, Kent, in 1900, aged 32. The following year Henry, another older brother, who by this time was working as an insurance agent, married and went to live with his new wife in Southampton.
By 1911 George Soffe, then 30 years old and still a bachelor, had left Winchester and was lodging and working as a gardener at Dairy House Farm in Woodington, East Wellow, near Romsey. His younger brothers also remained in or around Winchester. Frederick, who by this time was married with two young children and working as a nurseryman, lived at 35, Western Road. Ernest, also married and with a son and a daughter, lived in Otterbourne while Arthur, who had enlisted as a gunner with the Royal Marines Artillery in 1902, was based in Portsmouth.
Great War Record
George Soffe was 33 when he enlisted with the 4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment in August 1914, shortly after the Great War began. Assigned to the 1/4th Hampshires, he volunteered for service overseas and sailed to India with his battalion in October. Four months later the 1/4th Hampshires deployed to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), with George entering the Asiatic theatre of war on 18 March 1915.
Once in Mesopotamia, the 1/4th Hampshires were soon in action against the Turks. George would have been involved in helping to secure the British oil pipeline in Arabistan (present day Iran) and then in operations north of Basra on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers during the summer. Many men from the battalion succumbed to disease and heatstroke during this period but George appears to have come through unscathed.
George possibly served in ‘A’ Company of the 1/4th Hampshires. The company deployed to the British garrison town of Kut-al-Amara at the end of November 1915 after the Turks halted the advance towards Baghdad of a British-Indian force under General Sir Charles Townshend, forcing it to retreat to Kut. The Turks then surrounded the garrison and laid siege for five months before Townshend surrendered on 29 April 1916. (For details of the siege of Kut see Kut).
George Soffe was one of 188 officers and men of the 1/4th Hampshires taken prisoner when Kut fell. Along with 12,000 other British and Indian troops he was marched off as a prisoner of war, destined for PoW camps in Turkey. George, however, never made it. Some two months after setting off from Kut, he died at Mosul, probably from disease, aged 35. The exact date of his death is unclear - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission gives 26 June 1916 while the Winchester War Service Register (WWSR) gives the date as 20 June 1916 and other sources state that he died on 13 June 1916.
A short notice announcing George’s death appeared in the Hampshire Regimental Journal of January 1917:
Soffe - On June 26th, at Mosul, Pte George Soffe, Hampshire Regiment (a prisoner of war from Kut), fifth son of Mr and Mrs J.T. Soffe, 8, Upper Stockbridge Road, Winchester, aged 34 [sic].
Family after the Great War
Four of George’s brothers served in the Great War. Henry (service number 17710) enlisted with the 2nd Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment in May 1915 when he was 43 years old. He was killed in action on 20 October 1916 at the Battle of Le Transloy during the latter stages of the Somme Offensive. See Henry Soffe's biography.
Three Soffe brothers survived the war. In December 1915 35-year-old Ernest, by then widowed, enlisted with the Hampshire Regiment in Southampton. He later transferred to the Machine Gun Corps (service number 63162) and served in Salonika, reaching the rank of Acting-Corporal. He finished the war in the Labour Corps (service number 486143) which suggests that he may have been deemed unfit to serve in the front line because of wounds or illness. Frederick Soffe joined the Royal Garrison Artillery (service number 3237) in July 1916 when he was 33 years old and living at 22, North View, Winchester. His enlistment papers show that he had previously been in the Army. Frederick also served in Salonika. Arthur Soffe, meanwhile, remained on the home front with the Royal Marine Artillery. All five Soffe brothers are listed in the WWSR.
This housing block was the site of 8, Upper Stockbridge Road, Winchester (later 17,
St Paul’s Hill), the home of George Soffe’s parents at the start of the Great War.
Judging by the cars in the background, the photograph was probably taken in the 1960s or 1970s. The block was later demolished
George’s father Tom died in Winchester, aged 80, on 17 February 1917, just months after the deaths of George and Henry. Charlotte Soffe, George’s mother, continued to live at 17, St Paul’s Hill until around 1925 when she is believed to have moved in with her son Arthur. In 1939 Arthur was living at 39, Brassey Road, Winchester, together with his sister Rosa and his mother who by then was incapacitated. Rosa and Charlotte both died the following year, aged 73 and 93 respectively. Arthur, who had returned to working as a jobbing gardener after the Great War, passed away in Winchester in December 1954 at the age of 70.
Frederick Soffe also continued to live in Winchester after the war. In 1939 he was living with his wife and 29-year-old son at 177, Stanmore Lane, and was still working as a nurseryman. He died in December that year at the age of 57.
Ernest Soffe moved to Chandlers Ford after the war and he died there in 1945, aged 65. George’s sisters Charlotte and Constance both married and went to live in Basingstoke where they died aged 67 and 87 respectively. Frances, who had married in 1900, passed away in Bromley, Kent, in 1944 at the age of 69.
Medals and Memorials for George Soffe
Private George Soffe's British War Medal and
Great War Memorial Plaque
Private George Soffe was entitled to the 1914 - 15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. His British War Medal and Great War Memorial Plaque, along with the original cardboard case and letter addressed to his father Tom, were put up for sale for £225 in around 2015 (see right). George is commemorated on the Basra Memorial, Iraq (PR. Panel 21 and 63.) and on the memorials at St Matthew’s and St Paul’s churches, Winchester.