Harry Spencer was born on 11^th December 1873 in Highgate, Middlesex. He was the middle child of five from the marriage of his father, James, a brickmaker, and mother, Emma. He grew up in Islington, and with his brother, Walter, worked for a greengrocer.

At the age of 24 years, in October 1898, Harry Spencer enlisted into the army, joining the 1^st Battalion, The Welsh Regiment at Aldershot the following month.

Within a year, the British Army was fighting in South Africa after war broke out there against the Boers. The war was caused by the British Empire seeking to expand its influence and land occupancy in lands which were populated by Boer farmers, and across South Africa in general, following the discovery of large deposits of gold and diamonds. As many of the deposits were in Boer territories, the Boers resisted the expansion of the British Empire across their lands.

Harry Spencer sailed with his battalion for South Africa, one of the first to arrive from overseas, embarking on 4^th November 1899. He served there for almost two-and-a-half years, and was twice promoted during his time there, but on 20^th August 1902, he gave up his corporal’s rank, reverting at his own request to the rank of private, with Good Conduct pay. During service in South Africa, Harry Spencer’s battalion was involved in major battles at Paardeberg and Driefontein in which the battalion suffered heavy casualties. When medals were awarded for the South African War, the Queen’s South Africa Medal Harry Spencer received carried clasps for his involvement in actions at the Relief of Kimberley, Paardeberg, Driefontein, Johannesburg, Diamond Hill, and Belfast, while his King’s South Africa Medal carried the usual clasps for South Africa 1901, and South Africa 1902.

The Army Reserve consisted of three sections; A, B and D, and each had differing regulations relating to training requirements and payments. Men in A Reserve would be required to train for 12 days annually, and subject to satisfactory attendance, they received 7 shillings per week. This was equivalent to the basic pay of an infantry soldier; without the proficiency or Good Conduct payments a Regular Soldier could accrue. A man may stay in A Section of the Reserve for no longer than two and a half years, when he would usually transfer to B Section of the Reserve.

Most men leaving Regular Army service opted to go straight into B Section of the Reserve. Their training obligation was lighter than that of A Section, as was their call-out liability, but B Section men received only 3 shillings and sixpence weekly as their reserve pay. At the end of a man’s reserve service, he could opt for a full discharge, or choose to extend his reserve service by transferring to Section D.

Harry Spencer chose to transfer to Section D at the end of his combined Regular and Reserve Service totalling twelve years, on 28^th October 1910, committing to a further four years in the reserve.

On leaving Regular Army service, Harry Spencer indicated that he would go to live in Pontypridd in Glamorgan, where he would work as a coal porter, and in the 1911 Wales Census, there is a Henry Spencer who was born in Highgate listed as a boarder in the household of Mr William Harts and his family, at 24 Windsor Street, Treherbert, further up the Rhondda Valley than Pontypridd.

Harry Spencer was still on D Reserve of the Army when the Great War broke out, and he received mobilisation orders to report to the 3^rd (Reserve) Battalion, the Welsh Regiment at Maindy Barracks in Cardiff. He reported on 5^th August 1914. Within seven weeks of his mobilisation, Harry Spencer had been restored to the rank of corporal, but on 4^th November 1914, shortly before he was posted to 2^nd Battalion, which was already serving in France with the British Expeditionary Force, his request to relinquish his rank was granted, and on 29^th November 1914, Private Spencer sailed to France to join his battalion, which was serving in 3^rd Infantry Brigade in 1^st Division.

Although it is well known that there was something of a truce between German and British troops in small sections of the front line near the French and Belgian border, this temporary stoppage of the war was not widespread, and the 2^nd Bn Welsh Regiment was not involved in any such truce or fraternisation, indeed, the war continued unabated for them in their sector. Small arms fire, machine guns and artillery were all active during the Christmas period, and as the year turned from 1914 to 1915, the small-scale fighting associated with normal trench holding routine carried on and continued to produce small numbers of casualties each day. A typical entry in the battalion’s war diary for this period, that of 5^th January 1915, records, ‘Absolute peace and quiet all day. Casualties: - 1 killed.’ The battalion was relieved and marched to billets on 8^th January.

The first major offensive action involving the 2^nd Bn Welsh Regiment during 1915 was the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May, when the 1^st Division, under Major General Richard Haking was deployed astride a feature known as the Cinder Track, which ran roughly southeast from the Rue du Bois, south of Richebourg l’Avoue, near Neuve Chapelle. The battalion would attack along track’s axis towards the German lines, some 200 yards in front of them. The ground here is flat and open, devoid of any natural cover, and is dissected into large parcels of land by deep, wide drainage ditches which are necessary to keep the land tillable and remain wet all year round. A worse place to launch an attack would be difficult to find. The ground has such a high water table that it was impossible to dig meaningful defensive positions below ground level, and both opposing armies constructed above-ground breastworks to provide a measure of cover.

The attack began at 05:30 on 9^th May, with artillery opening a bombardment of German positions, during which, the infantry battalions sent out their leading men into no man’s land to establish a start line about 80 yards from the German lines. The Artillery bombardment that was meant to keep the Germans sheltering, so that the infantry could advance unobserved was inadequate, and every move the infantrymen made was seen, with their positions when they did go to ground noted. As soon as the main thrust of the attack got underway, the Germans opened up a terrific hail of machine gun fire which cut down the 2^nd Bn Welsh Regiment as it picked its way through the few gaps in the barbed wire defences in front of the German positions. Not a single man of the battalion was able to reach the German

Evacuated, Harry Spencer arrived at 7 General Hospital at St Omer the day after he was shot, before being moved to 1 Stationary Hospital at Rouen three days later, where he stayed for two weeks. He was discharged from hospital on 15^th October 1915 and sent off to No. 1 Infantry Base Depot at Le Havre. It seems that the wound he had suffered was relatively minor, compared to what it might have been, and straightforward to repair and treat.

Under normal circumstances, a soldier at an Infantry Base Depot might expect to undergo some remedial training to bring him back to fitness before being drafted back his battalion, or perhaps be transferred to a different unit as requirements dictated, but this was not what happened to Lance Corporal Spencer. Because he was mobilised reservist, and because the Military Service Act of 1916 was still some months away, when his period of service expired, he could either apply to terminate his service and return home, or he could elect to re-enlist and stay with his unit. Having been so recently wounded, and perhaps realising how fortunate he had been in not being killed when he was wounded, Harry Spencer chose to take his discharge, and he was sent back to England to begin this process on 26^th October 1915, just a month after his face wound occurred. At this point, he had accrued 17 years and two days’ service as a Regular and a Reservist, with his release being dated 30^th October 1915. He was discharged to an address in Ystrad Mynach, north of Caerphilly, and he returned to working in a colliery.

Harry Spencer was called up in October 1916. It is unknown if he made any appeal for exemption, but his personal circumstances would have made a weak case if he had. Though coal mining was a critically important industry, those men employed as miners enjoyed no increased protection from being conscripted. He was enlisted and embodied on 17^th October 1916, and immediately attached to the Royal Defence Corps.

The Royal Defence Corps was created in 1916 from officers and men who were either tool old, or unfit, for overseas service, and the purpose of the Corps was to provide men to guard vital infrastructure across the country, such as railways, bridges, ports and factories engaged in work of national importance, such as munitions factories. Roughly half of the Corps was engaged in guarding Prisoner of War camps. The officers and men were organised into Protection Companies which were distributed among the reginal commands of the army.

Initially posted to 6 Protection Company, engaged on Lines of Communication work, most probably on the railway network, he was posted on 23^rd February 1917 to 155 Protection Company in Northern Command. It is likely that 155 Protection Company was involved in the guarding the National Shell Filling Factory at Barnbow, with Harry Spencer being billeted locally, because on 25^th August 1917 he married Annie Elizabeth Stamp, originally of Micklefield, who lived at Lazencroft Cottages on Manston Lane, the approach road to the factory, with the cottages themselves on the periphery of the factory complex, near the main entrance.

Harry Spencer returned home to Manston Lane. He and Annie added ten more children to their family. They continued to live at Lazencroft Cottages until 1934, when they moved a mile up the road into 108 Austhorpe Road, in Cross Gates, almost opposite Manston Park.

In 1943, the Yorkshire Evening Post printed an article about the children of Harry and Annie Spencer, including her sons from her first marriage. Six of the eight sons of both marriages were serving in the army, as well as a son in law, and two daughters who were employed doing war work. All of them survived the war. In the article, Harry Spencer who, in the 1939 Register of England, was described as an old age pensioner appears in a uniform, so it may be that he had come out of retirement, in his late 60s, to go back to work.

Both Harry and Annie Spencer enjoyed long retirements. Harry died in 1963 at the age of 89, while lived until she was 86, dying in 1976.