Hooter tribute to brewery families touched by war

The old hooter at St Austell Brewery will blow at 11am tomorrow – as it has done each November 11 since 1918 – to mark the signing of the Armistice. Many families from the works were touched by the conflict, and families will be remembering those who contributed to one of the most tumultuous periods of modern history.

For all the right reasons the war is remembered as a time of sorrow, but it was also a time of great change that shaped the brave new world of the 20th century and, like many stories from that era, the tale of St Austell Brewery’s Hicks family at war is one that reflects all aspects of that transformational time for both men and women.

Walter Gerald Hicks, grandson of brewery founder Walter Hicks, represents the hundreds of thousands of young men who ran to the call in August 1914, volunteering to do his bit for king and country. Applying for a commission in the Royal

Fusiliers, he trained with his comrades across the end of the year before making his way over to the frontline trenches near Armentieres in the late spring of 1915.

Returning from a reconnaissance mission in no man’s land on August 12, he was shot by a sniper’s bullet in front of his own frontline trench and bled out through a severed femoral artery, despite the ministrations of the brigade physician.

News of his promotion to first lieutenant, awarded for his bravery and devotion to his men, arrived at the frontline as Walter Gerald lay mortally injured. A brother officer wrote of him in De Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour: “His men worshipped him and no words of mine can describe to you what he did for them. He set a fine example of cool courage to us all – officers and men.”

Walter Gerald was buried at the Cite Bonjean cemetery at Armentieres. He was just 22 years old when he was killed in Flanders Fields, reflecting the fate of so many of his comrades, the “Flower of England’s youth”.

Both his uncle George Hicks and cousin Egbert Barnes served on the front line, in the Sportsman’s Battalion and the Royal Garrison Artillery respectively. Both were lucky enough to survive, though in Egbert’s case it was touch and go after he was literally “blown back to Blighty” by a shell burst on his dugout in late 1918.

Like so many of those who came back, they never talked about their war experiences. Understandable when one reads of the horrors they and their comrades endured in the trenches. George retired back to the family farm and his wartime secrets went with him to his grave, while we are lucky enough to have Egbert’s story through a series of letters from family members just after the war – testament to the importance of keeping hold of old family documents.

A letter written by Egbert’s