SECOND LIEUTENANT JAMES DOUGLAS HODDING
10TH BTTN ROYAL FUSILIERS
10TH JULY 1916 AGE 17
BURIED: HEILLY STATION CEMETERY, MERICOURT-L'ABBE, FRANCE
This "dear happy boy", a second lieutenant in the Royal Fusilers, was born in March 1899, gazetted on 28 May 1915 and therefore was only 17 when he died of wounds at the Casualty Clearing Station in Heilly on 10 July 1916. He was too young to be on active service and too young to be at the front. It appears that he was wounded when, behind the lines, a shell set off a grenade dump. He died at the Casualty Clearing Station in Heilly the next day.
Hodding was born in Portsea, Hampshire. His father and grandfather served in the Indian Army. A pupil at Wimbledon College at the time of the 1911 census, the family subsequently emigrated to Duncan, Vancouver Island, British Colombia.