Frederick Sturgess

Frederick Thomas J Sturgess was born in Hambledon in 1892, the son of Thomas William and Emma Sturgess of Clapgate, North Lichfield. He grew up in the village in a working rural household and was still living there as a child in Church Lane at the time of the 1901 census. By early adulthood he had already entered military life and in 1911 was serving with the Hampshire Regiment at Aldershot, choosing a soldier’s career while many of his contemporaries remained in farm work.

At the outbreak of the First World War he was serving with the 2nd Battalion Hampshire Regiment and rose to the rank of Corporal, part of the regular army sent overseas early in the conflict. The battalion landed in the Balkans theatre on 25th April 1915 during the Gallipoli campaign, one of the first major British attempts to break the stalemate of the war by attacking the Ottoman Empire. The fighting there was severe and exhausting, carried out in steep terrain under intense heat and constant fire, with disease as dangerous as enemy action.

After the evacuation from Gallipoli the battalion was moved to the Salonika front in northern Greece, where Allied forces attempted to support Serbia and hold a defensive line against Bulgarian and German troops. Conditions were harsh and unhealthy, with extreme weather and widespread sickness affecting many units.

During this period Frederick was wounded and eventually returned to England. He died of his wounds on Tuesday 8th August 1916 at the age of twenty-four. He was buried in Winchester (West Hill) Old Cemetery, close to home soil after service far from it.
Frederick Sturgess had spent much of his adult life in uniform and had served in some of the earliest overseas campaigns of the war. His name remains among those of Hambledon men who did not return.