World War 1

William Charles Apps was born on 9th December 1897 in Southwick, Hampshire, and baptised the following January. He grew up the son of William Charles Apps and Anne A. Apps in a rural landscape of farms and small communities, later living at Park Farm Cottages in Hambledon. Like many village boys of the late Victorian and Edwardian countryside, his early life would have been practical and local – work, family and parish life marking the passing of the years rather than travel or adventure. When war came in 1914 he was still too young to serve, and nothing in those early years suggested he would spend his adulthood on the battlefields of France.

Frank Clay was born in December 1884 at Glidden in Hambledon, the son of George and Keziah Clay. He grew up in a large rural family in the parish, alongside his brother Frederick, with whom he would later be commemorated on the Hambledon War Memorial. Like many young men from the village he eventually moved toward Portsmouth for work while retaining close ties to his home community.