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Of Tragedy and Valor
Albert Edward RUMBELOW DCM
1879 - 1919
High Wycombe
Albert Rumbelow was born in 1879, the son of paper maker Philip & Jane Rumbelow in High Wycombe.
He served with the 1st Battalion from 1895 to 1907, was awarded the South Africa medals for 1901 and 1902: he was also granted the clasp for his involvement in the defence of Ladysmith. He appears to have been wounded at this point, and was invalided out of full military service and placed on reserve.
In 1904, Albert was back in England, and living in London. That year he married Ellen Sillis, a cordwainer’s daughter from Norfolk. The couple set up home in Fulham, and went on to have five children: Abert Jr, Iris, Florence, Doris and Hilda.
By the time of the 1911 census, Albert was working at the local Public Hall, as a labourer, hall attendant and cleaner. The family were living at 9 Crabtree Lane in Fulham, sharing the property with the Fitzgerald family.
He was one member of a quarter of the staff employed at the Royal Albert Hall who volunteered to fight during World War I, enlisting in 1914 at the age of 35 leaving behind a wife Ellen Mary and five children.
Albert gained the Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘Conspicuous Gallantry’. His citation reads that he ‘exposed himself to machine gun and shell fire when going across the open to rescue a wounded man. Later he went under fire to fetch a stretcher’.
Sergeant Albert Rumbelow was returned to England badly injured and died two months before Armistice Day in a military hospital in Ashford, Kent, at the age of 39. He was one of the few soldiers to be buried on English soil.
His grave is located in the churchyard of St Peter Parish Church, Aylesford Kent and his name is alongside many others on the War Memorial at High Wycombe Hospital.
His grave is located in the churchyard of St Peter Parish Church
https://deathandservice.co.uk/2022/11/16/cwg-serjeant-albert-rumbelow/
Albert Edward Rumbelow was born in 1879 in Wycombe Marsh, Buckinghamshire. One of eleven children, his parents were Suffolk-born paper maker Philip Rumbelow and his wife, Jane.
Little information is available about Albert’s early life, although by the time of the 1901 census, he is recorded as being a Private in the Rifle Brigade. The family had moved to the village of Little Chart in Kent by this point, where his father was still continuing in the manufacture of paper.
Private Rumbelow’s military service is evidenced in later documents. He served with the 1st Battalion from 1895 to 1907, was awarded the South Africa medals for 1901 and 1902: he was also granted the clasp for his involvement in the defence of Ladysmith. He appears to have been wounded at this point, and was invalided out of full military service and placed on reserve.
In 1904, Albert was back in England, and living in London. That year he married Ellen Sillis, a cordwainer’s daughter from Norfolk. The couple set up home in Fulham, and went on to have five children: Abert Jr, Iris, Florence, Doris and Hilda.
By the time of the 1911 census, Albert was working at the local Public Hall, as a labourer, hall attendant and cleaner. The family were living at 9 Crabtree Lane in Fulham, sharing the property with the Fitzgerald family.
War was closing in on Europe by this point, and, once again, Albert stepped up to play his part. He enlisted within days of conflict being declared, and within weeks had been given the rank of Corporal. His service records note that he was 5ft 10ins (1.78m) tall, weighed 156lbs (70.8kg), had brown hair and blue eyes. He was also recorded as having a tattoo of crossed rifles and a crown on his right forearm, and scared on his left calf, knee and eyebrow.
By the spring of 1915, Albert had been promoted again, to the rank of Serjeant. He was sent to France on 19th May, having been assigned to the 7th (Service) Battalion. Serjeant Rumbelow was involved at the Somme and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal “for conspicuous gallantry” on 3rd June 1916. “He exposed himself to machine-gun and rifle fire when going across the open to rescue a wounded man. Later he went under fire to fetch a stretcher.”
Serjeant Rumbelow appears to have been injured in the skirmish, and was invalided to the UK later that month. When he recovered he was posted again, this time to the 18th (London) Battalion of the Rifle Brigade.
The following February he made the transfer across to the Labour Corps, and by March 1917, Serjeant Rumbelow was back in France. In August he was promoted to Company Sergeant Major, but was invalided back to England with bronchitis in February 1918.
When he recovered Albert was assigned to the 364th Area Employment Coy. in Kent, and seems to have voluntarily taken a drop in rank – back to Serjeant – in doing so. His health was dogging him by this point and in the late summer of 1918, he was admitted to Preston Hall Military Hospital in Aylesford, suffering from VDH, or heart disease.
Sadly, the strain of his military service was to be his undoing. He passed away from the heart condition on 21st September 1918, at the age of 39 years of age.
Albert Edward Rumbelow was laid to rest in the graveyard of St Peter & St Paul’s Church in Aylesford, not far from the hospital where he had breathed his last.
Now widowed, Ellen was left with the unenviable task of raising five young children on her own. She married again, to Private William Lake, on 8th June 1919, and the family moved to Essex. She lived until the age of 79, and was laid to rest in Sutton Road Cemetery in Southend.
Albert Rumbelow
In 2014 I was working as usual adding metadata to the photographic images on the Serving Soldier database. The albums, paperwork and ephemera I annotated at the time were donated by the family of the late Major General Charles Howard Foulkes CB CMG DSO (1ST February 1875 – 6th May 1969) to the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, a leading repository founded in 1964.
While adding metadata and keywords to the images the handwritten notes written by Major General Foulkes caught my eye. Underneath a photograph of a not so youthful moustachioed Sergeant were written the words ‘Sgt Rumbelow 4 Platoon A company, 7th RB at Arras March 1916, DCM Gazette 6.6.16.’
I am not a researcher but curiosity caught hold of me and I decided to do a quick internet search firstly to find out what a DCM was (part of the learning curve when working with photographs of the Military so that I can give correct information) then to see if I could find out more about this rather more mature soldier who looked quite hauntingly tired as he gazed into the camera lens.
Upon entering his name, I was directed to a website dedicated to holding information about ‘fallen’ military personnel of Buckinghamshire http://buckinghamshireremembers.org.uk. Low and behold there was a record of Sergeant Rumbelow with details of his name, regiment, where he enlisted, where he died and the location of the memorial on which his name is displayed. I took it upon myself to send an email to the person who ran the website to ask if they had a photograph of Sergeant Rumbelow, in actuality they had all of his information but didn’t possess a picture of him. I forwarded a photograph and was met with a lovely response ‘I just cannot thank you enough for helping me to discover the full details of this brave man, I would never have discovered these extra details’.
My discoveries did not stop there: from the information I had gleaned I then knew that Albert Rumbelow worked at the Royal Albert Hall as a cleaner and hall attendant; he was one member of a quarter of the staff employed at the Royal Albert Hall who volunteered to fight during World War I, enlisting in 1914 at the age of 35 leaving behind a wife and four children. I contacted the organisers of an exhibition planned at the Royal Albert Hall in which I knew that Sergeant Albert Rumbelow was mentioned and asked if they would like a photograph of him. The response was they would because they did not have one.
In the summer of 1916 (we know it was in June) Albert gained the Distinguished Conduct Medal for ‘Conspicuous Gallantry’. His citation reads that he ‘exposed himself to machine gun and shell fire when going across the open to rescue a wounded man. Later he went under fire to fetch a stretcher’.
Albert was returned to England badly injured and died two months before Armistice Day in a military hospital in Ashford, Kent, at the age of 39. He was one of the few soldiers to be buried on English soil because the government had taken the decision not to repatriate the bodies of those killed in battle. His grave is located in the churchyard of St Peter Parish Church, Aylesford Kent and his name is alongside many others on the War Memorial at High Wycombe Hospital.
Barbara Cornford
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