Born in January 1894, Reginald Frank Herring was the son of Hattie Herring and Frank Herring, a schoolmaster. In 1911 they lived at 40 Sackville Gardens, Ilford, Essex. He was a scholar at Coopers Company School in Bow from 1912 to 1914. Reginald emigrated to Canada and was a cashier for the Great Northern Railway Company in Canada. He then joined the 13th Battalion, Canadian Infantry (Quebec Regiment).
The battalion served in France from February 1915 and over 60% of recruits were of British origin. When moving to the front line the Canadians were shocked at the broken down and filthy trenches, ground littered with debris and the remains of the unburied dead. The hopeless state of the Canadian front line in contrast to the Germans led to an effort to bring the standards up.
Germany decided to use poisonous gas and chose chlorine as it immediately incapacitated those exposed to it and proved fatal. Each man was given a makeshift respirator made of cotton bandolier to be wetted and tied over the nose and mouth. The respirators were of little effect against the chlorine.
Reginald Herring was killed during the second gas attack on 24th April 1915. Reginald’s body was never identified. His name is recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial, Belgium.
Three years later Reginald’s younger brother, Albert, was killed when his aircraft was shot down in 1918.
Some information / extracts have been reproduced with kind permission of Karen Pack from her book ‘Coopers’ Boys & Coborn Girls: Their Part in the Great War’ © Karen Pack, 2015
Sources:
Ancestry.com
ICHS school records and magazines
Commonwealth War Graves Commission