Harry Furber Hooker

Harry Hooker was born in Hambledon on 21 June 1895, the son of Mrs Emma Hooker of Lytheys Close. Like many rural Hampshire boys at the beginning of the twentieth century, his future did not lie entirely in England. At the age of fourteen, in October 1909, he left home and sailed from Britain to Canada, arriving at Quebec aboard the Empress of Ireland. He was sent west to Manitoba, part of the large movement of young British farm workers who emigrated to the Dominions in search of opportunity and agricultural employment. There he grew up working as a farmer on the Canadian prairies.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Canada entered the conflict as part of the British Empire, and men across the country volunteered in large numbers. Having made his life there, Harry enlisted at Sewell, Manitoba on 23 June 1915. His attestation papers recorded him as a farmer, unmarried, and born in Hambledon, with his mother still his next-of-kin in the village – a reminder that although he now served Canada, his roots remained firmly in Hampshire.

He joined Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians), one of Canada’s most famous cavalry regiments. Originally raised as mounted troops, the regiment spent much of the war fighting dismounted as mobile infantry, but retained the aggressive spirit and rapid movement expected of cavalry. By 1918 the regiment was operating on the Western Front during the German Spring Offensive, a desperate series of attacks launched in an attempt to win the war before American forces could arrive in strength.

On 30 March 1918, near Bois-de-Moreuil in France, Canadian cavalry units were thrown into the fighting to halt the German advance. In confused and dangerous conditions, cavalrymen advanced against strong opposition to hold vital ground. During this action Trooper Harry Furber Hooker was killed. He was twenty-two years old.

Though he fell serving with a Canadian regiment, Hambledon never forgot him. His name stands among the village war dead because, like many of his generation, his life bridged two parts of the Empire – born in an English village, matured on the Canadian frontier, and lost in the fields of France.