On the 16th December that year the German Navy bombarded the artillery emplacement at Hartlepool’s Headland. A shell demolished the upstairs part of 7 Victoria Place, killing William Avery who was working there while his family were sheltering downstairs. His death, as one of the first British civilian victims of the Great War, made headline news in the National Press and was reported as far away as Sydney, Australia. His devastated widow and their 5 children, the youngest of whom was only 10 years old, were looked after by The Salvation Army. The Adjutant was accorded a civic funeral, his body being transported to the local Cemetery on a gun carriage through streets lined with soldiers. The Mayor of Hartlepool led the mourners, while the funeral service in which, by Salvation Army tradition, the Adjutant was deemed to have been ‘Promoted To Glory’ was led by the ‘Army’s’ most senior officer. On William Avery’s grave in the Cemetery are the words: ‘He Died At His Post’.
Mrs. Avery, together with her children among whom was my own mother, then aged 12, was transferred by The Salvation Army to Walthamstow in London to begin a new life in which, in due course, 4 of those5 children were destined to become Salvation Army officers. And Destiny herself was at work in all this tragedy. Had my grandfather, William Avery, not been killed, his family would not have moved to London, my mother would never have met my father, and I would never have been born. Nor would my own four children, including my first-born son, Adam His birth date?
The 16th December…