247405 Cpl. Geoffrey Hodge British Army 9th Btn. Kings Royal Rifle Corps from:Trevidgoe Farm, Withiel, Cornwall (d.21st March 1918) Geoffrey Hodge was born on the 27th February 1896, Geoff was the youngest child of William and Beatrice Hodge of Trevidgoe Farm, Withiel, Cornwall. His siblings were Marjorie, William (Guy), Beatrice, and Edward (Ted). On the outbreak of the First World War, Geoff and his brother Ted declared that as soon as the harvest was over they would leave the family farm and join up. They traveled to Plymouth together to do so, and in 1915 both brothers were serving in France.
Geoff served with the 9th Battalion Kings Royal Rifle Corps, surviving the majority of the war unscathed, being promoted to the rank of Corporal, and outliving his brother Ted, who died of wounds received at the Battle of Loos in 1915 while serving with the 9th Bn. Devonshire Regiment. (See separate listing).
During the first day of the Kaiserslacht, the 1918 German Spring Offensive, Geoff was reported missing. His family didn't hear news of him for nine months, until after the armistice. In December 1918, Geoff's mother received a letter from The Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing, informing her that a prisoner of war, Lance Corporal H. Bayliss, had returned to France with the news that Geoff had been killed at the time that he himself had been taken prisoner
According to Bayliss, Geoff was killed on the 21st March, 1918. He was aged just 22. His body was never found. Geoff is commemorated on a panel of Pozieres memorial, in France. Previously, the name which honours Geoff's memory had been misspelt as Hodges, however the Commonwealth War Graves Commission kindly rectified this mistake in 2008. The outline of the extra s can still be faintly seen.
Geoff is also recorded on the Roll of Honour in Winchester Cathedral - Winchester being the home of his regiment. He was awarded the British War Medal and Allied Victory Medal, along with a Bronze Death Plaque.
Both Geoff and his brother Ted were killed in the First World War. Their eldest brother (and their parents only surviving son), Guy (my Great Grandfather), had been unable to join up due to heart condition he'd had since birth. The family farm had to give up their horses to the war effort, a sacrifice from which Guy never recovered. At the death of his two brothers, Guy was forced to give up his studies to become a veterinary surgeon, and instead had to take on the family farm - which was sold a few years later, in 1922. One of Geoff's sisters, Beatrice, served as a nurse with the Red Cross during the war, and his oldest sister Marge lost her fiance as well as two brothers in the war she never married, and later became a schoolteacher in the local town, Bodmin.
|