Captain Roger Busick PEMBERTON
7th (Service) Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and General Staff

Date of birth: 21st July 1888
Date of death: 16th January 1962

Died aged 73
Unknown
Roger Busick Pemberton was born at 8 Inverness Gardens, Kensington on the 21st of July 1888 the second son of Busick Edmonds Pemberton, a solicitor, and Harriett Eleonora (nee Mills) Pemberton of Coke’s Green, Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire and of 14 Sussex Square, Hyde Park in London.

He was educated at Hazelwood School until April 1899 when he left for a seaside school in order to cure his anaemia. He later went on to Eton College where he was in Mr. Robert Penrice Lee Booker’s House from September 1901 to December 1906. He served as a member of the Officer Training Corps and attended annual camps in 1905 and 1906. In October 1907 he went on to Trinity College Oxford where he was a member of the Oxford University Officer Training Corps Cavalry Unit from 1909 to 1910, attending the annual camps in both years and the cavalry manoeuvres in 1910.

On leaving university in 1910 he was articled to Herbert Arthur Whately, solicitors of 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC. The partnership was dissolved on the 30th of June 1914.

Following the outbreak of war he applied for a commission in a New Army Battalion on the 4th of September 1914, for a commission in the Royal Naval Division on the 17th of September and for a regular commission on the 21st of September 1914. At a medical examination, which was held at Oxford on the 4th of September 1914, it was recorded that he was six feet tall and that he weighed 145lbs. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on the 18th of September 1914. He was promoted to Lieutenant on the 3rd of November 1914 and to Captain on the 31st of October 1916.

He served in the UK from September 1914 to September 1915 and then went to France until being transferred to Salonika as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in December 1915 where he served until December 1918. He was appointed as a General Staff Officer 3rd Grade on the 6th of January 1918, was transferred to the General List and served on the staff of 28th Division at their Headquarters. On the 4th of October 1918 he left his unit and was admitted to 21 Stationary Hospital, Salonica suffering from double pneumonia which he had contracted following a bout of influenza. He embarked for Malta from Salonica on board the Hospital Ship "Glengorm Castle" on the 29th of November 1918 and embarked for England from Malta on board HMT "Royal George on the 25th of December 1918. He relinquished his appointment as a General Staff Officer Grade 3 on the 4th of January 1919 and disembarked at Liverpool on the 5th of January 1919 from where he was taken for treatment to the 3rd London General Hospital at Wandsworth Common.

He was demobilised at the Officers Dispersal Unit in London on the 5th of June 1919 and relinquished his commission on the same day, retaining the rank of Captain.

He was married to Lilian Isabel (nee Drabble) on the 19th of April 1922 at Holy Trinity, Bishop’s Road, London; they had a son, Busick Charles, born on the 20th of January 1923 and two daughters, Adriana P., born on the November 24th 1927 and Phoebe B., born in 1931. They lived at Grove Park, Yoxford in Suffolk.

After the war he returned to his law practice as a solicitor and became a partner in the firm of Lee and Pemberton of 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2. He retired as a partner on the 31st of December 1938 but was still working for the firm as late as 1949. During the Second World War he served as Billeting Officer for Yoxford.

He died at Blyth in Suffolk.

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