PRIVATE ERNEST GEORGE DE LATHOM HOPCRAFT
LONDON REGIMENT
27TH SEPTEMBER 1918 AGE 32
BURIED: FLESQUIERES HILL BRITISH CEMETERY, FRANCE
This may not seem like a very interesting inscription but there's a very interesting story that lies behind it - and rather a sad one too, not that all these stories aren't sad.
I've given Hopcraft the rank of private, which he was, but it doesn't say so on his headstone, the place where his rank should be is blank. And I've given his regiment as the 20th Battalion London Regiment, which it was, but again it doesn't say so in the normal place on his headstone. I can't imagine what force of character Hopcraft's father must have applied to achieve this with the War Graves Commission ... but he did. What lay behind it?
Ernest George de Lathom Hopcraft was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant on 29 December 1914, transferring from the Reserve to the 13th Battalion Middlesex Regiment on 15 May 1915. In April 1916 he went to France where he was a billeting officer. Some French people were very reluctant to have British officers billeted on them and one woman in particular was very uncooperative. In an attempt to get him out of her house she began hitting and slapping him ... and he retaliated. Hopcraft was arrested, court martialled and on 19 February 1917 dismissed from the service for "committing an offence against the person of a resident."
Hopcraft's father, also called Ernest, obviously found it very difficult to accept this, but despite appeals to the War Office his son was not reinstated. Ernest Junior therefore re-enlisted in the Rifle Brigade, transferred to the London Regiment and was killed in action on 27 September 1918.
His father told the story as he wanted it to be known on a memorial plaque in All Saint's Church, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire:
Ernest George de Lathom Hopcraft
Aged 32 years. The only son of Ernest Hopcraft J.P. Northants, of Brackley and
Middleton Cheney. Who answered duty's call and volunteered and was given a
Commission in the 13th Middlesex Regiment. He gave his life, his all, for his King and
Country.
After having fought in Palestine he fell in action, at the assault on the German
Hindenburg Line at Marcoing near Cambrai. September 27th 1918; 5 weeks and 4 days
Before the Armistice.
Gone but never forgotten.
At the Battle of Flesquieres near Marcoing he gallantly attacked, single handed a German
Machine gun post and was killed.
Strangely, had Ernest Hopcraft Senior not said what he did on his son's headstone I would never have bothered to see what was going on. And had he not insisted that neither his son's rank nor his regiment should appear on the headstone other people's curiosity wouldn't have been aroused either. I got much of the information for this inscription from a Great War forum for which I am very grateful.