Private, Canadian Infantry - Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (Eastern Ontario Regt.)
Born: July 31st 1890
Died: December 16th 1916
Age at Death: 26
Killed in action, France, December 16th 1916
Brighton College Register: Son of James A. Body of Hove, Brighton. (Later of Park Cottage, East Malling, Kent.
Brother to F. Body (BC re. 3074)
Service Number: 475778
Cemetery: ECOIVRES MILITARY CEMETERY* ; Pas de Calais, France
Grave Reference: III. J. 24.
Headstone engraving: FOR KING & COUNTRY
A donation to the memorial statue has been made in honour of this soldier by Jim Leader (Ch. 1965-70).
Harold was born in Brighton England, in July, 1890. After receiving his education at Holmfield Sutton and Brighton College, he entered the service of the Bank of Montreal in England but was soon transferred to Canada. In 1915 he enlisted as a Private in one of the Universities Companies recruited to reinforce the Princess Partricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, and a few weeks later he went to France with his unit. He was severely wounded by enemy fire on June 2nd, 1916, during the attack on Sanctuary Wood in the Ypres Salient. He was evacuated to England but, after a few weeks in hospital, he recovered sufficiently to return to the front where he re-joined his former battalion it he line. He had been back with his unit only for a brief period when, on December 16th, 1916, he was instantly killed in action at St. Eloi.
Biography – From Memorial from the Great War 1914-1918: a record of service published by the Bank of Montreal, 1921.
*Mont St Eloi is a village in the Department of the Pas-de-Calais, 8 kilometres north-west of Arras. The village stands on high ground overlooking the battlefields of Vimy and Souchez and the main Bethune-Arras road, and the ruined towers that rise from it were used as an observation post during the French attacks at Neuville-St Vaast and Givenchy in May 1915. Ecoivres is a hamlet lying at the foot of the hill, to the south-west and about 1.5 kilometres from Mont St Eloi on the Arras-St Pol line. The ECOIVRES MILITARY CEMETERY is on the D49 road.
Private Harold Body (Chichester House 1905–1907)
Harold Body was born in Hove on 31st July 1890. He was the second son and fifth child of James Body, an England Rugby player who briefly owned the brewery which stood on the site now occupied by the College’s Woolton building, and his wife Mary (née Indcox). The couple were married in New York in 1884 and in the late 1880s lived in Winnipeg, Canada, where James Body ran a flax oil company, before returning to Brighton by 1891. Their son Harold was born after they returned to England and, like his brothers, was a pupil at the College, where he was in the football 2nd XI and the cricket 1st XI. He also won a science prize.
After leaving school, Body took a job in the Bank of Montreal’s office in London and later transferred to their head office in Canada. Ten months after the outbreak of war he enlisted in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and on 9th December 1915 joined his unit in the Ypres area. On 2nd June 1916 he received a bullet wound in the back and was invalided back to Britain, where he remained until declared fit for service again on 17th July 1916. However, on 15th December 1916 he was killed in action while fighting in the Mount Sorrel area near Ypres.
His grave is in the Ecoivres Military Cemetery, Mont-St Eloi, France.
Source: LEST WE FORGET PROJECT, Brighton College 2014/15
Also mentioned in:
Wisden on the Great War: The Lives of Cricket's Fallen 1914-1918
Also remembered on: