Harry George Biswell was born in Leverstock Green, Hertfordshire on Sunday, 17th November 1895 and baptised with his younger brother John two years later on Sunday, 26th September in Holy Trinity Church in the village. Harry was the first child born to Harry (Henry) Biswell and Louisa Bonnick, of ‘Belconey’, Leverstock Green. Harry and Louisa had eight children in total who were: Harry, John, Gertrude, Jessie, Charles, Bessie, Florence and Dorothy May. His brother John also fell in the Great War just over eleven weeks after Harry, on the 27th July 1916. His next-door neighbour in Leverstock Green had been Benjamin Oakley who was killed just six months earlier. 

The Biswell family lived at 18 ‘Belconey’ in Leverstock Green for many years and all the children were born there, except Jessie and Charles who were born in nearby Cupid Green.  ‘Belconey’ was one of the poorest areas of Leverstock Green in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It consisted of a long terrace of about ten meagre dwellings, along with two pubs ‘The Mason’s Arms’ and ‘The Plough’, which still stands today.

When Harry was born his father was a Bricklayer’s Labourer and by 1911, fifteen-year-old Harry had started work as a ‘Groom’, while his father worked at the nearby brickfields as a ‘Brickmaker’.

On the outbreak of war Harry enlisted with the Essex Regiment, attesting at Saint Albans in September 1914 and was then posted to the 12th (Service) Battalion at Shorncliffe near Folkestone in Kent to commence basic training. This Battalion was formed at Harwich in October 1914, as a Service battalion for ‘K4’ in Kitchener’s new army, but by April 1915 it had been converted to a ‘Reserve’ battalion for training new recruits and home defence. At that point it started to draft newly trained men to other battalions and Harry was posted to the 9th Essex and sent to France, disembarking in France on the 24th August 1915.

He joined his battalion on the 30th September 1915 and was sent to the trenches almost immediately. On the 25th September, only fifteen days after arriving at the Front, Harry was one of twenty-four casualties following heavy and very accurate shelling of the 9th Essex positions. He was wounded in four places and went down the line for treatment.

Harry recovered from his wounds and was subsequently posted to the 11th (Service) Battalion Essex Regiment joining it near Ypres in Belgium. He was wounded a second time in early 1916 but recovered and returned to the Front Line once more and by the beginning of May, Harry was in the trenches in front of Brielen, just north of Ypres.  

On the 5th May Harry was shot by an enemy sniper as he left the trenches during an ‘Inter Company Relief’ and sadly died of his wounds on the following day Saturday, 6th May 1916. He had been in France and Flanders for only five months when he was killed.

Harry’s death was reported in the Hemel Gazette not long afterwards.

The Gazette consistently recorded the family name as Bisnell and not Biswell in any published reports.

He is commemorated on the Leverstock Green War Memorial.

Harry is Remembered with Honour in the Essex Farm Cemetery, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium, where he is interred in Grave: II. M. 21. The inscription on his headstone, requested by his mother Louisa, reads: “GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS”

He was only 20 years old when he died.

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