Frederick and William Barrett





Victoria Street (picture from SWOP website)

Memorial for Frederick and William Barrett on grave kerb stones in High Wycombe Cemetery





Frederick Burnaby Barrett 1888 - 1916

Born in March 1888 in High Wycombe, I was the loving son of John and Sarah Barrett and brother of William Barrett, Joseph, John, Alice, and Albert. We all lived together at 24 Victoria Street, High Wycombe, or at least did so for a while. I followed in my father’s footsteps and became a chair maker for Ernest Gomme at a Chair factory on Leigh street after I had finished school. My older brother William had done the same, before going on to fight in the South African War. My brother John worked there too as a chair polisher, so it really was something of a family trade.

I’d been training with the Wycombe territorials for a number of years, and when war broke out we were mobilised. Given my experience, I ended up as a sergeant in the 1/1st Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry which made me second in command of the platoon and gave me the responsibility of assisting the junior officers. Our battalion was mobilised on August 4th 1914 at Aylesbury and joined the 145th Infantry Brigade of the South Midland Division at Portsmouth. We had to wait to be sent to the front line to ensure we had completed the right amount of training to prepare us for battle. We finally landed at Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France on March 30th 1915 after 7 months of training in Chelmsford.

We moved towards Hebuterne in the Somme sector in July 1915, after 3 months in the line near Ploegsteert. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were to be in the reserve for the Battle of the Somme. That first day seemed like hell; the inferno, the bombardment, the wounded, the dead. Being in reserve, we couldn’t do much, and felt an odd mixture of guilt and relief. We got our turn soon enough at the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. This saw the southern section of the German Second line being successfully captured by the British Fourth Army and the possibility of fully securing the whole of the German Second Line became clear if Pozieres was captured. The village of Pozieres was an important German defensive position as it was situated by the highest point on the battlefield.

It was decided that our battalion would attack the German trenches west of Pozieres whilst the Australian 1st Division attacked the village from the south. We were scheduled to attack at 12:30am on July 23rd alongside the Australian 1st and 3rd Brigade – we crept into no man’s land behind the bombardment, a mixture of both phosgene and tear gas, and rushed into the German trenches after it had lifted. An observer described the soldiers as “men who had been in hell… drawn and haggard and so dazed that they appeared to be walking in a dream and their eyes looked glassy and starey.”

I was killed in this action. I’m not entirely sure how, and because my body was never found nobody else can say either. Last I remember was storming across open ground, urging the platoon onwards. My name was commemorated in two different places. It was engraved in the Thiepval Memorial, a Memorial to the Missing of the Somme who have no known graves, on Pier and Face 10A & 10D. It was also displayed on the War Memorial plaque at the entrance of the High Wycombe hospital.

William Barrett 1878 - 1915

I was Frederick's older brother. I served through the South African War, as did many Wycombe men, and so it was only natural that I would want to be in the thick of it when war broke out with Germany. During the Great War I was Lance Corporal 9149 with the 5th Battalion of the Oxford & Bucks Light Infantry.

Frederick was always my little brother, several years my junior, and I think that I must have set him a good example as he spent a number of years with the Wycombe Territorials before the outbreak of war in 1914.

Like Frederick, I was also a chair maker with E Gomme in Leigh St. I was a member of the Bird in Hand cricket and gun clubs and enjoyed an active life. I married Edith Emily Dimmock in 1899 and she was living at 13 Dashwood Avenue when she heard of my death. I died from wounds on the 29th September 1915 and I am buried at Etaples Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France. I was 37. I am also remembered on my wife's grave in the 1920s extension of Wycombe Cemetery and you can read more about my story there.



Researched by Neill George, Gill Evans, and the girls of Wycombe Abbey School

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