HEL "Charles" Mellersh

For secondary schooling, Harold attended St Albans Grammar School, Hertfordshire (from 17 Sep 1908 to 31 Jul 1910), and Berkhamsted Public School, Hertfordshire (until Spring 1915) [boarded: same as brother & nephew]. Harold then volunteered as an Officer in the Army (infantry) from 1915 to 1919, in the East Lancashire Regiment, fighting in the trenches on the Western Front 1916 - 1918. The Supplement to the London Gazette dated 9 June, 1915, page 5609, stated Harold, 3rd Battalion, from Officers Training Corps, to be Second Lieutenant (on probation), to join the School of Instruction at Oxford University, commencing 14th June, 1915. Subsequently his date of entry into the Theatre of War (France) was 15 April 1916 (from his medal card in National Archives, catalogue reference: WO/372/13/209722). Harold was wounded no less than 3 times during WW1 (in July 1916, in Feb 1917 and in March 1918). In Feb 1919 as an officer outside Brussels he visited the Louwage family, whose mother & daughter, Maria & Vivienne, had been Belgian refugees for some years with his parents in St Albans. [Father Florent Louwage later became head of Interpol, and 2nd child Muriel Winefred Louwage was named after Harold's 2 sisters.] Harold caught Spanish Flu but survived. Much later, Harold wrote an autobiography of his early life, entitled "Schoolboy into War," published by William Kimber in London in 1978. Altogether Harold wrote and had published about 25 books: 3 novels and many non-fiction, some for adults and some for children, all mostly historical.