Henry John Moles was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire on Monday, 2nd May 1898 and baptised on Wednesday, 11th January 1899 at St Agnes Church, Kennington, Southwark. He was the second child born to John William Moles and Susan Brownsmith, who had five children together who were: Edith Ellen, Henry John, Leonard William, Sidney James and Mary Margaret. St Agnes Church where he was baptised was originally designed by the architect Gilbert Scott and it was sadly destroyed by enemy bombing in the Second World War. Henry’s younger brother Leonard also fought in the Great War and survived the conflict. Leonard followed his father into the Hertfordshire Constabulary and like his father attained the rank of Sergeant.

Henry’s father John had been a "Baker", but joined the Police Force shortly after marrying in 1896. John was posted to Hitchin with the Hertfordshire Constabulary and was living at the Police House there in 1901. Ten years later he had been promoted to Sergeant had moved to Ware, Hertfordshire. By the time of his retirement, he had attained the rank of Superintendent and closed out his police service at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.

On the outbreak of war Henry was amongst the first volunteers and he went to Hertford where he attested in August 1914, enlisting with the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment. His choice of regiment may have been influenced by his father who hailed from North Yorkshire, or it may have been a way of ensuring no-one would know him in his new regiment. The reason for this is simple, he was sixteen years and three months old when he attested, so clearly falsified his age. He was probably tall and physically well developed for his age, and it may have been the case that the Recruiting Officer turned a blind eye.

Hundreds of thousands of underage volunteers tried to enlist and some 250,000 succeeded. Official government policy was that you had to be eighteen to sign up and nineteen to fight overseas. In the early twentieth century most people didn’t have birth certificates, so it was easy to lie about your age. It didn’t help that recruitment officers were paid two shillings and sixpence (about £6 in today’s money) for each new recruit, and would often turn a blind eye to any concern they had about age. At the same time, though, some officers thought the fresh air and good food of the army would do some of the more under-nourished boys a bit of good.

The recruitment process included medical checks, to make sure a potential recruit was fit enough to fight rather than if he was old enough. The minimum height requirement was five feet, three inches, with a minimum chest size of thirty four inches, so a strapping sixteen year-old was very likely to be let through. The rule of thumb seemed to be if the volunteer wanted to fight for his country and was physically fit enough to do so, why stop him? But it wasn’t just in recruitment offices. The whole of society seemed to be complicit in sending these boys abroad to fight. Parents, headmasters, even MPs helped get underage lads into the army. There was collusion on all sides to get these boys and young men into the armed forces. Yet most people (including recruitment staff and parents) would have assumed the war would be over before any of them were ready to go overseas.

Accepted as ‘Fit’ for service, Henry was posted to the 8th Battalion West Riding Regiment for basic training at Belton Park in Grantham, Nottinghamshire. By April 1915, he had moved with his unit to Witley and by September he had embarked for Gallipoli arriving at Suvla Bay on the 11th October.

His time in the Balkans was brief and relatively uneventful and the Battalion shipped out again in December, when it sailed first to Cairo where the next five months were spent on defence duties on the Suez Canal. The Battalion sailed for France in July 1916. The 8th Battalion Duke of Wellingtons was disbanded in France in February 1918 and Henry found himself transferred to a new unit, the 2/5th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment at Ambrines, west of Arras in France.

In March the Germans launched a huge offensive against the British 5th Army and the right wing of the 3rd Army. The artillery bombardment began at 4.40am on the 21st March and hit targets over an area of 150 square miles, the biggest barrage of the entire war. Over 1,100,000 shells were fired in five hours. By the end of the first day, the allies has lost over 17,000 casualties and during the next four days of staunch defence many more men were lost. By the 25th March the 2/5th Lincolnshires had lost more than 500 men Killed, Wounded or Missing, over 50% of its fighting strength and sadly Henry was one of the men killed.

He died on Saturday, 23rd March 1918.

It seems that Henry never lived in Hemel Hempstead, having enlisted before his father moved to take up his position as Police Sergeant in the town. He no doubt visited when given home leave and he appears on the War Memorial because his mother and father were still in the town when the final "Roll of Honour" was agreed in 1921. Following his death, Henry was buried by the Germans, in Noreuil German Cemetery, along with nine other allied troops who had fallen. However, these graves were later lost when further battles took place in the area.

Henry is Remembered with Honour in Queant Road Cemetery, Buissy, Pas de Calais, France, where a special memorial was erected with the following inscription: “To the memory of these 9 British soldiers who were buried by the enemy 1918 in NOREUIL GERMAN MIL. CEM., but whose graves are now lost. Their glory shall not be blotted out”

His father John also requested an inscription which would have been engraved on his headstone had one survived and it reads as follows: “HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE IN PEACE”

He was only 19 years old when he died.

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