13th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
Hugh Jones was born at Lydney on 21 December 1888 and educated at Wycliffe College, Stonehouse. Here he excelled at cricket and football and was voted the house prize for ‘gentlemanliness and kindness’ by his fellow students. Upon completing education he spent a year with a shipping office in Bristol, before joining his father’s ship owning and builders’ merchants business at Lydney.
He enlisted on 26 September 1914, initially in the 12th (Bristol’s Own) Battalion of the Glosters but soon applied for a commission in the 13th Battalion (Forest of Dean Pioneers). Having been appointed Second Lieutenant on 28 February 1915, he was promoted to Lieutenant in the following May and was made Captain in August of the same year.
On 4 March 1916 he arrived in France and later that year saw action during the Somme Offensive. In September he was awarded the Military Cross for an action of which a fellow Captain wrote: Hugh was in charge of the company one night, when the Germans put up a terrific gas shell barrage. Some of his men having lost their way in their gas helmets, Hugh got out of the trench at very great risk and by flashing his torch and pushing and pulling them along, he got them all back to the trench with only two fatalities. Then he walked over the open to an artillery dugout and brought back stretchers.
In July 1917, whilst in the Ypres Salient, Hugh suffered a slight wound but was badly injured in the thigh and leg by machine gun bullets at Maricourt on 27 March 1918. After several months of healing and convalescence he was able to return to his unit only to be struck down with influenza in late October. He was evacuated to Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham, where he died of pneumonia on 10 November 1918. He was buried in St Mary’s Churchyard, Lydney.
In July 1914 Hugh had made his county cricket debut for Gloucestershire at Worcester. Chronologically he was the last First Class cricketer to die in the Great War.