Herbert John Spinks

Born: 1891

Died: 8 August 1916

Rank and Regiment: Private 7601 of the Norfolk Regiment

Resting Place: Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq - Cemetery Reference XXI. T. 32.

Memorial: St. Peter’s, Kimberley, United Kingdom

Herbert John Spinks was born in Wicklewood in about 1891. He was the son of Alfred Spinks, bricklayer, and Maria nee Carr.

The family were living in Kimberley at the time of the 1901 Census.

Herbert Spinks enlisted in the Norfolk Yeomanry in 1906 and after that enlisted in the Norfolk Regiment on 17 December 1907. He is recorded as standing 5 ft 3 in tall and weighing 125 lb (8 st 13 lb). In the 1911 Census, his father includes “Herbert John Spinks, soldier, aged 20” but he is then crossed out, indicating that he unexpectedly slept away from home on Census night.

He obtained a 3rd class certificate of education in 1909, and in August 1914 it is recorded that he had been employed on a military railway for ten months, learning his duties as a driver. “A very steady and trustworthy man”, it is said of him; but elsewhere in his records it appears that he contracted syphilis in June 1914 in Bombay and spent some time receiving treatment.

He was part of the Indian Expeditionary Force which was involved in the campaign in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), and he was one of over 13,000 British troops taken prisoner on the fall of Kut-al-Amara on 29 April 1916, a humiliating defeat following only four months after the British defeat at Gallipoli. In a book published in 2010, the historian Jan Morris, a British historian described the fall of Kut as "the most abject capitulation in Britain's military history."

Herbert Spinks and many of his comrades were marched to a prisoner-of war camp at Yarbaschi, in modern day Turkey. Conditions were terrible, and although nothing specifically relating to Herbert Spinks’ treatment has survived, it is virtually certain that he will have suffered abuse, assault, poor food and disease. He died of malaria and dysentery in a military hospital in Yarbaschi on 8 August 1916. The record of his death states that he “Died peacefully in the presence of the Doctors and nurses. Buried by his comrades”.

His effects amounted to some worn clothing which his camp commander distributed among other prisoners who were in need of it.

It was not until 16 October 1918 that his parents were notified of what had happened to him. Letters from his mother to the military authorities, pleading for some information about him, survive in his records (“We received a field card from him on 6 April 1915 saying he was quite well and a letter would follow, but we have never heard since. I should be pleased if I could hear something of him as he was a regular writer when in India”).

His body was subsequently exhumed and he was reburied at Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery (Cemetery Reference XXI. T. 32.). The Commonwealth War Graves Commission record him as: Son of Alfred and Maria Spinks of Attleborough Lodge, Kimberley Park.

Three of his brothers also served in the Great War but survived. In Alfred’s case, he sustained a gunshot wound to his left forearm and was assessed at 20% disabled. Alfred was married with four children, one of them conceived just after he was demobilised, but appears to have died in 1921.

Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq