Albert Harry Reneville was born in Hackney, Middlesex on Saturday, 17th September 1887 the third child of Oscar Jerome Reneville and Grace Harriet Johnson. He was baptised on Sunday, 9th October 1887 at St Michael and All Angels in Hackney. Oscar and Grace had eleven children, two of whom died. The children were; Grace Mary Ann, Oscar Edward, Albert Harry, Harry Emille, Alice Jessie, Emille Albert, Nellie, Florence Lilian, Walter and Ivy Elizabeth. Albert’s oldest sister Grace died in 1910.

Albert’s Grandfather was a carpenter from Normandy, France who came to live in West Ham in east London in the 1840’s. French names were therefore common in the family and two of Albert’s uncles were Napoleon and Emile, along with Emille and Florence amongst his siblings.

In 1901 the family lived at 55 Palace Road, Hackney in east London and thirteen-year-old Albert and his brother Oscar worked as ‘Tooth Brush Polishers’. The modern toothbrush had been invented in 1770 by William Addis whilst in Newgate prison. By 1840 his company was mass producing toothbrushes for the world market in east London under the brand name ‘Wisdom’. The brush handles where made from bone, sometimes ivory, and ‘polishing’ the handles was one of fifty-three processes in the increasingly sophisticated manufacture. The Addis family owned Wisdom Toothbrushes until 1996 and the company still produces over seventy million toothbrushes a year in the UK. Albert’s father Jerome was a ‘Boot Finisher’ and as the name suggests, his job was the last stage in the process of hand making boots and shoes.

By 1911 Albert, aged twenty-three, was boarding at the home of Samuel Dayton at 98 Apsley End having moved to the area to work as a ‘Paper Packer’ at Dickinson & Co. Ltd. in Apsley Mills. It was here that he met a Boxmoor girl, Daisy Orchard, who worked at Dickinsons as a machinist in the Envelope Department and they married the following year in the Spring of 1912.

Albert and Daisy moved to Boxmoor after their marriage and lived at 1 Russell Place opposite Boxmoor Baptist Church. It was here that their only child Ivy Daisy Reneville was born in early 1914. Following Albert’s death, Daisy remarried in 1921 and with her new husband, Walter Freeman and daughter Ivy, she emigrated to Canada in the same year.

At the end of the Great War there were some 240,000 widows in the UK. Although most of them were granted a war pension, with a supplement for children, this were insufficient to cover daily needs and many of the women topped up their incomes by working or relied on help from their families. In many cases the widows remarried even though this meant partial or total loss of their war pension.

Following the outbreak of war in October, Albert enlisted at Watford with the Bedfordshire Regiment and was posted to the newly formed 8th Battalion at Bedford. The 8th Battalion was a "Service" battalion that was formed specifically for the duration of the war as part of 'K3' - Lord Kitchener's 3rd 'call to arms' for another 100,000 men. It was attached to the 71st Brigade of the 24th Division and remained there for a year, before transferring twice to end up with the 16th Brigade of the 6th Division.

Albert undertook his basic training initially in Brighton for a brief spell, followed by seven months at the sprawling New Army training area around Woking in Surrey. Finally, the increasingly restless men of the 'Hungry 8th' (a nickname used in a letter home from Private 19861 Leslie Worboys), received orders to mobilise and prepared to ship out. At 11pm on the 28th August 1915, the Battalion boarded the troop trains at Chobham Station and left for Dover. After transferring straight onto troop ships, they arrived at Boulogne early on the 30th August 1915.

Albert soon saw action and fought in The Battle of Loos in September. He was also in the line at Forward Cottage trenches north of Ypres when the Army experienced the first German use of Phosgene gas on the 17th December and hundreds of men were lost in the attack.

January 1916 started with very wet and windy weather and by the 5th and 6th the 8th Battalion were experiencing very heavy shelling by the Germans. It seems most likely that Albert received his mortal wounds on one of those days. He was admitted to the Australian Hospital at Wimereux near Boulogne but sadly died of his wounds on Saturday, 8th January 1916.

Albert was the first soldier from Hemel Hempstead to die in 1916 and he is commemorated on the Dickinson & Co. memorial at Apsley.

Albert is Remembered with Honour in Wimereux Communal Cemetery, Nord Pas de Calais, France, where he is interred in grave I.L.2.

He was 28 years old when he died.

Albert was eligible for the 1914 – 15 Star, the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.