Albert John Hamilton

Albert Hamilton was born in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, about 1895, but grew up in Hambledon where his widowed mother Jane Hamilton raised her family in West Street. By 1911 he was working locally as a farm horseman, typical of many young men in the village whose lives were rooted in agricultural labour before the war.

Like many rural labourers he enlisted in the Hampshire Regiment during the later years of the war and joined the 14th Battalion, one of the Service battalions raised for Kitchener’s Army. After training in England the battalion was sent to the Western Front where it became part of the British offensives in Flanders during 1917.

Albert was killed on Wednesday 26th September 1917, the opening day of the Battle of Polygon Wood, a major phase of the Third Battle of Ypres. The attack followed weeks of relentless rain that had turned the battlefield into deep mud. German defences consisted of concrete pillboxes covering open ground swept by machine-gun fire. Infantry advancing that morning struggled forward through waterlogged shell holes under artillery bombardment and small arms fire.

The 14th Hampshire Regiment attacked as part of the wider assault intended to push east of Ypres and capture the high ground beyond Zonnebeke. Although the attack eventually secured its objectives, casualties were severe, particularly among the leading waves who crossed the exposed ground first. Albert Hamilton was among those killed during the advance and his body was never recovered.

He is therefore commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing near Passchendaele, which records over 35,000 men of the Ypres Salient who have no known grave .