Gunner H. Playforth

FIRST NAMES: Herbert

UNIT: "C" Battery, 317th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

NUMBER:761374

STATUS: Died of Wounds

DATE OF DEATH: 21st October 1917

CEMETERY OR MEMORIAL: Dunhallow A.D.S. Cemetery, Ypres, Belgium

AGE: 20

Herbert Playforth was the youngest son of Emily and the Late William Playforth, who had worked on the railways as an engine cleaner. He was born in Romanby on 5th November 1896 and was baptised in Northallerton on 6th December 1896. His cousin, George William Brown, is listed on the Romanby Memorial. He lived at No. 25 Gladstone Street, Northallerton, but it appears that his father had died by the time of the 1901 Census as he is recorded as living on Gladstone Street with his mother (a widow) and 7 brothers and sisters. By the time of the 1911 Census he was still living at Gladstone Street with his mother, a sister and a lodger and he was working as a grocer's errand boy.

Herbert then spent some time working as a clerk for the North Riding County Council at County Hall before moving to the North Eastern Railway where he followed in his father's footsteps by working as an engine cleaner at Darlington. This would have been in late 1913 as he was admitted into the Northallerton Branch of the National Union of Railwaymen on 3rd Novemeber 1913. He is recorded as having left the Union in June 1916. He was also a member of the Romanby Choir.

He enlisted in the North Riding Battalion in July 1915 and was later transferred to the Royal Naval Division Artillery. Herbert also had two brothers serving in the armed forces when he was killed, one on The Western Front and the other in Salonika.

The Dunhallow A.D.S. Cemetery was begun next to an Advanced Dressing Station which was located next to the nearby canal. It was nearly doubled in size at the end of the War as the bodies of soldiers in nearby smaller burial grounds were moved and concentrated in this cemetery. Herbert Playforth was, however, one of the original 875 burials of soldiers who succumbed to their wounds whilst at the nearby dressing station. Of these original 875 men, 215 are artillerymen like Herbert, who was 20 when he died.