27965 Private Horace Batty, of the 2nd Battalion Sherwood Foresters (the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) was born at Eckington, Derbyshire, near Sheffield, Yorkshire in 1896. His parents were William Batty (born Killamarsh, Derbyshire, near Sheffield Yorkshire 1871) and Elizabeth Batty nee Duckett (born York, Yorkshire 1872). They had married at the church of St Giles, Killamarsh, in 1893.

The 1911 census located the 15-year old Horace Batty with his parents and siblings living on King Street, Hodthorpe, near Whitwell, Derbyshire. At that time, his father was employed as a Coal Miner – Hewer, and Horace as a Colliery Pony Driver Below Ground.

Horace Batty’s service records have not survived. But he publication ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919’ shows that he enlisted in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. And his medal card that he originally served (under the same number) with the 9th Battalion Sherwood Foresters, plus that he was awarded the 1914-15 Star, thus confirming that Horace first entered a war zone before 31 December 1915.

‘First World War Soldiers' Medical Records’ and ‘Hospital Admission and Discharge Registers’ relate that Horace was admitted to the 18th General Hospital on two occasions: on 8 October 1916 for treatment of piles. That record shows that Horace was then 22-years-old, had been in the army for four years, and had served 18 months in the field. And on 2 November 1916, this time for treatment of an abscess on his face. He was discharged from the latter on 18 November. At the time the 18th General Hospital was on the French coast, at Camiers in the Pas-de-Calais Department, Hauts-de-France Region.

His Commonwealth War Graves Commission entry confirms that Horace Batty died on 1 July 1917 (when he would have been circa 21) and that his name is engraved on the Loos Memorial: “Loos-en-Gohelle [being] a village 5 kilometres north-west of Lens, in the Pas de Calais Region of France". And CWGC adds that: “The Loos Memorial commemorates over 20,000 officers and men who have no known grave, who fell in the area from the River Lys to the old southern boundary of the First Army, east and west of Grenay, from the first day of the Battle of Loos [which ran from 25 September to 8 October 1915] to the end of the war.”

Horace Batty’s brother also fell. He was 73291 Private William Batty Duckett, of the 16th Battalion Sherwood Foresters. William died on 2 August 1917, and is interred in New Irish Farm Cemetery, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.

The 1921 census located Horace’s parents at 65 Newgate Street, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, with his father employed as a Coal Miner – Getter (another term for a Hewer) at Manton Colliery.