Fred Alban Samways

Fred Alban Samways was born in Hambledon in 1894, the son of Frederick and Elizabeth Samways. He grew up at The Vine public house in West Street, kept by his grandmother Emma Furber who was also the village grocer. The building was part home and part centre of village life, and he spent his childhood in surroundings familiar to many in the parish.

By 1911 he was seventeen and working as a brewer’s clerk, a position that suggests both education and responsibility beyond ordinary farm labour. He remained living at The Vine with his family, rooted in the same household in which he had been raised.

After the outbreak of war he enlisted at Southampton into the 19th (Queen Alexandra’s Own Royal) Hussars and became Lance Corporal 26708. The regiment served as cavalry on the Western Front, though by 1917 much of its work was fought dismounted, acting as infantry during the battles around Arras and the aftermath of the capture of Vimy Ridge. The fighting in this sector was continuous, with patrols, raids and shellfire causing steady casualties even outside major attacks.

Fred was wounded during this period of fighting and evacuated to the casualty clearing stations at Aubigny-en-Artois behind the lines. Despite treatment he died of his wounds on Sunday 20th May 1917 at the age of twenty two. He was buried nearby in Aubigny Communal Cemetery Extension, a burial ground created beside the clearing stations that treated the wounded from the Arras front.

He is remembered on the Hambledon War Memorial, his life cut short after growing up in one of the best known buildings in the village, among the community that had known him since childhood.