Alfred Herring was born on Friday, 14th November 1884 in Watford, Hertfordshire, and was baptised on Wednesday, 8th April in the following year at St Mary’s Church on Watford High Street. He was the first child and oldest son of William Robert Herring and Elizabeth Owen. Alfred had six younger sisters: Lily, Helen (Nellie), Dorothy, Margaret (Maggie), Alice, and Maud. His only brother was William Harry who also fought with the Bedfordshire Regiment and survived the war.

The Herring family lived at 28 Estcourt Road when Alfred was born, a few doors away for the town’s first purpose-built police station at the junction of Beechen Grove. Alfred’s education began on 12th January 1891 at Beechen Grove Board School and he completed his schooling on the 5th July 1897.

By 1891 the family had moved to Shafford’s Bottom, in Apsley End and sixteen-year-old Alfred was working at John Dickinson as a Paper Maker’s Assistant. He then met Mary Element from Chipperfield and they married in 1909 in Hemel Hempstead and set up home on Durrant’s Hill Road in Apsley. They moved just over a year later to 11 Two Waters Road, Boxmoor where their only child Margaret Elizabeth was born in late 1910.

Alfred then worked as a Vermin Killer. Killing vermin and rat catching particularly, was a busy occupation at this time due to insanitary conditions and the storage of grain and other foodstuffs in close to dwellings and water courses. Typically, the work was done with Terriers and Ferrets and whilst not the happiest of occupations it would have kept Alfred busy.

Alfred enlisted with the 2nd Bedfordshire Regiment in September 1914 and completed his basic training in Harwich. He was sent to France in 1915 and disembarked on the 21st April and was one of a draft of seventy-seven men which joined with the 2nd Battalion at Estaires on the 27th April 1915.

His first action was at the Battle of Festubert on 16th May 1915 as part of the British attack. His involvement was short-lived however, and he died on the Monday, 17th May 1915.

His death was the result of drowning in one of the water filled ditches which traversed the battlefield. The Battalion War Diaries for that day records the following: “…information was received by the C.O. that Lt.Col.Thorpe had called a halt, as he was unable to collect a party sufficiently strong to assault the German position, owing to the darkness, and many serious obstacles, in the nature of ditches varying from 2 to 5 ft. in depth, and from 2 to 5 ft. in width filled with water, running diagonally as well as parallel to our advance…”

During a retreat to re-group, it appears that Alfred and a number of comrades drowned in the ditches. Again, from the War Diaries: “During the night information was received that a portion of the 4th Camerons had succeeded in entering the enemy trench. Several men were drowned in the ditches, referred to above”

Alfred’s death was not finally confirmed to his wife until the 6th August 1915 however, Mary did not receive news of how he had died until the following month. Private Roadknight from Apsley End wrote to his wife asking that she inform Mary that he found Alfred’s body and he had been drowned. An account was published in the Hemel Gazette.

Alfred was initially buried not far from where he was found but his body was exhumed along with a number of his fallen comrades and re-interred at the Guards Cemetery in 1920. He had been at the Front for only twenty-two days when he died.

He is Remembered with Honour at the Guards Cemetery, Windy Corner, Cuinchy, Pas de Calais, France where he is interred in Plot IV. H. 11.

Alfred was 30 years old when he died.

He was eligible for the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.