On this day in 1918, Herbert Walter Kingdom (1899-1918) was just 19 when he died as a prisoner of war in Germany.
Herbert was a private in the 1/5th Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry when he lost his life on June 15, 1918.
He was buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery in Germany four days after his death and is remembered on the War Memorial at the Church of St Thomas the Canterbury in Puddington.
More than 1,000 Allied prisoners and dozens of German servicemen were buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery during the First World War.
Commonwealth forces entered Cologne on December 6, 1918, less than a month after the Armistice, and the city was occupied under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles until January 1926.
Paul Roberts
NOTES
Herbert was a nephew of George Kingdom (1862-1952), who married Lucy Roberts (1868-1945) on April 11, 1889 in Cruwys Morchard. Lucy was the eldest daughter of John Roberts (1829-1919), my great-great grandfather who had 30 grandsons serving in the Great War.
Born on May 1, 1899 in Thelbridge, Herbert was the son of Walter Kingdom (1864-1950) – George’s younger brother – and Eliza Ann ‘Annie’ Bristow (1870-1943). In 1911, he lived with his parents at Hope Cottage, Thelbridge.
Picture below
Herbert Walter Kingdom, who died in a German prisoner of war camp in 1918. Picture supplied by Anita Kingdom.
