(page updated 5 August 2011)
Eric Walter Hare was my maternal grandfather. He went to sea in WW1 as a sixteen year old and this was only discovered when he caught Rheumatic Fever and was duly sent home.
In the Second World War he was interned by the Japanese. He was living and working in Kobe as an accountant for the The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China.
I’ve just down loaded this form the National Archives.
To summarise:
In 1911 he was at Steyning Grammar School, as boarder as recorded in the 1911 census. I have two books that he was awarded in Class II for French (Froissart In Britain by Henry Newbolt) and Latin (Hannibal by William O’Connor Morris) as academic prizes at Christmas in 1910, both signed by the Headmaster, Edward Lea.
He may have been a boarder because his parents were in India, I think, and Eric was certainly born in there.
After Steyning he went to The Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College and I have a prize book he was awarded there for Scripture in 1914.
Eric went to war in the Navy in May 1915 just a few of weeks before his 17th birthday. He served on HMS Vanguard but in August of that year (22nd) it was noted that he had a severe case of rheumatic fever. He was released in March 1916 for being physically unfit. He may have missed out on the Battle of Jutland but in the long run it was a blessing because the Vanguard went down in 1917 with an estimated 804 casualties.
The Somme 