7683 Drummer Asher Hurrell, 2nd Suffolk Regiment

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Arrived overseas: 15 August 1914.

Connection: PoW postcard

7683 Drummer Asher John Grey Hurrell of the 2nd Suffolk Regiment sent this card from Dyrotz camp in 1917, noting on the front that is was from "Friend Asher" lest the lady he sent it to, Miss Ivy Naylor, should think otherwise.

A career soldier, he had been in France for precisely 12 days before he was captured at Le Cateau on the 26th August 1914, one of over 700 casualties sustained by the battalion that day, with many of those men taken prisoner. News about his capture was obviously slow to filter back to the UK, because on the 29th October, his worried mother asked for a letter to be published in the Stowmarket Post, asking for news of him.

Eliza Hurrell wrote, "I have been informed by the War Office that my son, Drummer Asher Hurrell, No 7683, has been missing since the action at Le Cateau on the 26th August. I should be greatly obliged if you would give publicity to this in your columns as it might possibly catch the eye of a comrade who could give tidings of him. Any information regarding him would be most gratefully received by me."

Born on the 28th March 1889, Asher Hurrell had joined the Suffolk Regiment a few weeks before his 19th birthday, on the 2nd March 1908, signing up for seven years with the colours and five on the reserve. Surviving papers in series WO 363 show that he lost five teeth when struck in the face by a German rifle butt in September 1914, resulting in a small pension award, albeit it was also noted that he already had other teeth missing at the time of enlistment. 

Asher Hurrell was repatriated to England in 1919, and civil papers show that he married Amy Rainbird in Mildenhall, Suffolk in 1922. By 1939 he was living with Amy and their three children at Mildenhall, and working on a farm as a head cowman. He died on the 14th August 1947 at the relatively young age of 58.

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