Private Arthur SEYMOUR
Home Guard

Date of birth: 19th January 1894
Date of death: 5th August 1944

Died of wounds aged 50
Buried at Chislehurst and Sidcup Urban District Cemetery
He was born at Foots Cray, Kent on the 19th of January 1894 the son of Ernest Frederick Seymour, tea merchant, and Ellen Jane (nee Fores) of "Eversley", 16 Crescent Road, Sidcup, Kent.

He was educated at Merton Court Preparatory School, Sidcup and at the King's School Canterbury from September 1908 to July 1913.

On leaving school he went into the tea trade.

Following the outbreak of war he enlisted as an Ordinary Seaman 1/3503 in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on the 8th of August 1914. At a medical examination it was recorded that he was 5 feet 9 inches tall with brown hair and grey eyes.

On the 22nd of August he was posted to the Benbow Battalion of the Royal Naval Division and went with them to defend the city of Antwerp from the German invasion. He was promoted to Able Seaman on the 15th of September 1914 but was captured when the city fell and was one of 1,500 men from the 1st Royal Naval Brigade who escaped to Holland where they were interned from the 8th of October. He spent the rest of the war as an internee with the exception of a period of leave to the UK from the 21st of November to the 18th of December 1917.

He was repatriated on the 19th of November 1918 and, on the 3rd of January 1919, a request for his release from the service was received at Royal Naval Division Headquarters, Aldershot from Messers Theodore & Rawlins, tea merchants of 71 Eastcheap in the City of London. On the 14th of January 1919 he was demobbed at Crystal Palace and returned to work as a tea merchant where he travelled abroad as a representative of his firm in Java, Ceylon and Shanghai.

He was married at the Church of St John the Evangelist, Sidcup on the 23rd of June 1926 to Dorothy Elton (nee Beater).

During the Second World War he joined the Home Guard.

On the 5th of August 1944 he was working in his garden at "Bentota", 5 Priestlands Park Road in Sidcup when he heard a flying bomb approaching. He managed to shout a warning to his wife who was able to take cover but he was badly injured when the bomb landed nearby. He died from his injuries at Queen Mary's Hospital.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at Merton Court Preparatory School.

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