Budd Moreton

Budd Moreton was born in West Tisted in 1888 and later moved with his parents, Edward and Elizabeth Moreton, to Hambledon where the family became part of the agricultural workforce of the parish. By 1911 he was living at Beckless Cottages and working as a farm labourer, part of a close rural household whose sons all reached adulthood just as Europe moved toward war.

Before leaving for the front he intended to marry Mabel Ellen Deacon of East Street, Hambledon, and marriage banns were read in October 1917. He returned to the fighting before the ceremony could take place. Their daughter, Mabel Dora Moreton Deacon, was born on 4th February 1918, three months after his death.

He served as a Sergeant in A Battery, 223rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery on the Western Front. During the fighting in the Ypres Salient in 1917 artillery batteries operated continuously under shellfire and frequent gas attack while supporting infantry operations in the battles around Passchendaele. On Sunday 4th November 1917 Budd Moreton died from gas shell poisoning aged twenty-nine. He is buried in Mendinghem Military Cemetery near Poperinge.

His death came two years after the loss of his younger brother Walter, meaning the Moreton family sacrificed two sons in the war – one in distant Singapore and one in the battlefields of Flanders.