Harry Leonard Hourd was born Harry Leonard Stevenson in Hickling, Nottinghamshire in August 1899 and baptised at St Luke Church on Friday, 22nd November 1901. His mother was Agnes Winifred Stevenson who lived at home with her mother Caroline and worked as a “Laundress”. In 1906, Harry’s mother Agnes married Robert Hourd from nearby Upper Broughton and they had two children together. Harry’s half-sisters were Norah born in 1908 and Dorothy May born in 1910. Just a year after Dorothy’s birth, Harry’s stepfather Robert died leaving Agnes to raise the young family alone. In the 1911 Census, Harry is recorded under his birth name “Stevenson” and it was not until he enlisted that he used his stepfather's name “Hourd”. He left school in 1914 not long before his mother Agnes married for a second time, and he and his siblings gained a new stepfather, James Guthrie. Only two years after the marriage, Agnes died at the age of thirty-eight.

Harry found work as a “Domestic Servant” and just prior to enlisting he was working as a “Footman’ in the London household of Gaby Deslys at her Kensington home, close to the Albert Hall. Gaby Deslys was a famous French dancer and was a huge star in theatre and early cinema during the Edwardian period and throughout the Great War. When she died in 1920 of complications from “Spanish Flu”, here estate was value at the astronomical sum of twelve million Francs. On the outbreak of war, Harry was still too young to enlist, but as soon as he reached his eighteenth birthday, he volunteered for service. He attested in London, although he was living in Manchester, but this may have been because his employer was performing there at the time.

He was posted for basic training to the 19th Middlesex Regiment at Aldershot and in around March 1918 he was sent overseas posted to the 2nd Battalion Worcestershire Regiment. Harry spent the next six months in and out of the front line as the Battalion fought, first around Ypres, before moving to France. In September, during another stint in the trenches, Harry was wounded and taken out of the line for treatment. Sadly however, his injuries proved too serious, and he succumbed.

He died of his wounds on Tuesday, 24th September 1918.

Shortly after his death his sister Norah, who can only have been about ten years old, received a letter from the Battalion Chaplain which contained the following: “I am afraid that nothing I can say will lighten your great sorrow, but I pray that our great Father in Heaven will comfort and console you and yours. I am sure that he has followed Lord Jesus Christ along the way of the Cross and will find the Master on the other side and will hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant”. May the knowledge that he still lives in Christ comfort you. II buried him at 2pm in the British Soldiers Cemetery here, where he lies with the other gallant boys.”

Research has failed to uncover any evidence that Harry ever lived in or visited Hemel Hempstead and the only possible link identified might be one John Thomas Stevenson. He may be the same John T Stevenson named as one of Harry’s beneficiaries on the “Register of Effects” document issued by the War Office in 1919 detailing where a fallen soldier’s effects, pay and war gratuity should be sent. John Stevenson was recorded living at 10 Christchurch Road in Hemel and he may be the person who ensured that Harry was commemorated on the town War Memorial.

Harry is Remembered with Honour in Five Points Cemetery, Lechelle, Pas de Calais, France, where he is interred in Grave A. 4.

He was only 19 years old when he died.

Harry was entitled to the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.