Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Lionel Clyde Hutchinson was born in Spalding, Lincolnshire on 12 September 1884. His father Robert, from Co. Durham, was a ship’s engineer, his mother Ellen was also from Spalding. Lionel’s elder brother died in infancy, and he had a sister Winifred. In the early 1890s and again in the 1900s his mother was keeping boarding houses in Bournemouth, but they must have lived in Bradford in the later 1890s when Lionel would have attended Bradford Grammar. By 1901, aged 16, he was articled to Hibberd, Bull and Co, Chartered Accountants of London and Bournemouth. He passed his final A.C.A. exam when he was twenty-one and from then he worked in their London Office.
Lionel (or Clyde as he preferred to be known) enlisted on 2nd September 1914, a month after war was declared, in response to Lord Kitchener’s call for volunteers. Although there were several battalions based closer to his lodgings in north London, he made the trek across London to join the Kensington battalion. Possibly his choice was based on friendship, or this was a more fashionable battalion. The 13th Kensingtons went to France on 4th November, where they were part of 25th Brigade of the 8th Division. Clyde needed to be trained and he was not sent out until 6th March 1915 with a reinforcement draft. He may have reached the front in time to participate in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10-12th March).
A few weeks later, on 9th May, the Kensingtons formed part of the first wave of the British attack on Aubers Ridge in support of the French Artois offensive. Owing to the severe shortage of shells, the bombardment was limited to forty minutes. They assaulted over flat
ground intersected by wide drainage ditches, and the Germans had strengthened their defences since the shock of Neuve Chapelle. However, the front lines were only one to two hundred yards apart at this point and the attackers were supported by the explosion of two small mines under the German lines. Their success in seizing three lines of German trenches led the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir John French, to describe the Kensingtons as “the glorious 13th”. Hutchinson met his death returning for a third time for supplies of grenades and ammunition under heavy German rifle and machine-gun fire. His C.O. wrote “He behaved
with great gallantry, it was a brave soldier’s death”; a comrade wrote “We were all very sorry to lose him, he was very popular with the fellows of his platoon”. The 13th suffered 436 casualties and had to relinquish their gains at 3 a.m. the following day. Clyde Hutchinson’s body now lies in grave XVI J. 9 in Cabaret-Rouge Cemetery, Souchez, north of Arras, having been moved there from its original burial place. He never married. He left effects worth £336 to his mother who died in 1931. His father died in 1923.'