Hubert John Oldring was born in Hemel Hempstead in 1894 the youngest son of George Oldring and Ellen Lovell of 10 Glenview Road, Hammmerfield. Hubert had eight older siblings who were: George, Harry, Benjamin, Ellen, Mary Ann, Winifred, Annie, and Edward Manning. Edward also died as a result of his war service in February 1919.

The Oldring family were involved in the Grocery trade and Hubert’s father George had his own grocery store at 25 St Peter Street, St Albans in 1881 employing two boys. By 1891 it seems his fortunes had taken a downturn and he worked as a Grocer’s Assistant in Hemel Hempstead where he had brought his growing family. They lived at Cemmaes Terrace on the Cotterells and the two oldest boys George and Harry were working as a Grocer’s Apprentice and an Errand Boy respectively. By the time Hubert is seven in 1901 his father is no longer in the Grocery trade and instead worked as a Bricklayer’s Labourer. The family had moved again to Glenview Road in Hammerfield where it remained until George’s death in 1941.

Hubert started work in 1904 as a ten-year-old, when he was employed by Mr George Washington Brooke, a Baker at 80 St John’s Road in Boxmoor. He worked for Mr. Brooke until he enlisted in 1914. In July 1911, Hubert’s oldest sister Ellen was married in Hemel Hempstead to Percy Stanley Hampson, a printer from Forest Hill in London. However, the union was short-lived as Percy tragically died five months before Hubert in 1915.

Percy had enlisted at the outbreak of war and joined the 7th Battalion Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment). On the 22nd May 1915, he along with 214 soldiers, mainly Royal Scots Territorials heading for Gallipoli, were killed in The Quintinshill rail disaster. This was a multi-train rail crash outside the Quintinshill signal box near Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire, Scotland and is still the worst rail disaster in British history. Percy, along with his comrades, was interred with full military honours in a mass grave at Rosebank Cemetery in Edinburgh, where an annual remembrance service is held to this day.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Hubert enlisted with the Grenadier Guards attesting in London in November. He was assigned to the 4th (Reserve) Battalion completed his basic training at Chelsea Barracks before being posted to the newly formed 4th Battalion Grenadier Guards in 1915. Hubert returned home to Hemel Hempstead in early August prior to mobilisation and according to a later report in the Hemel Gazette, seems to have had a prescient view of his fate telling his friends “it was the last time they would see him”. This sense of foreboding must have been common given the large numbers of deaths at the Front and the fact that thirty-nine Hemel soldiers had already been reported killed.

The 4th Battalion Grenadiers landed in France on the 16th August 1915 to join the 3rd Guards Brigade of the Guards Division. In September Hubert saw action at the Battle of Loos surviving the initial assault but sadly he was killed in action near Hohenzollern on Saturday, 16th October 1915 as the Germans counter-attacked. His death was reported in the Hemel Gazette along with a short obituary in early November 1915 and his death was also used as a clarion call for more young men to recruit. The following week a eulogy for Hubert was published in the Hemel Gazette.

Hubert had been an active member of Marlowes Baptist Church and on the 29th October 1916 he was commemorated there along with seven other members of the Church who had fallen. The Pastor the Rev. T. Percy George led the service and a brief report appeared in the next edition of the Gazette.

He had been in France for exactly two months when he was killed.

Hubert is Remembered with Honour on the Loos Memorial, Pas de Calais, France on Panel 7A.

He was 21 years old when he died.

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