Private Harry Bertram Andrews
Harry Bertram Andrews was born on 18 May 1888 at 85 Crescent Road, West Plumstead, Kent, the second of three children of fitter and turner William Edmund Andrews and his wife Annie (née Bowers). By the time of the 1911 Census he was living at 29 Elliscombe Road, Charlton, Greenwich, with his widowed father and a sister, and working as a baker. On 14 April that year he married Ethel Florence Hamer in the Woolwich Register Office. The couple had three children over the next six years.
Andrews registered for military service at Woolwich on 6 December 1915. By the beginning of 1917 he was employed at Woolwich Arsenal as a munitions worker, filling high-explosive shells. Soon after he was called-up, joining the 5th Cavalry Depot at Bristol on 18 May (regimental number 36238). Four days later he was posted to the 5th Reserve Cavalry Regiment at Tidworth. On 27 June he was transferred to the North Irish Horse at Antrim (No.2501).
Andrews remained with the regiment at Antrim until near the end of the war. On 11 January 1918 he was admonished and deprived of two days' pay for being absent off pass.
On 5 November 1918 Andrews embarked for France with a reinforcement draft for the North Irish Horse Cyclist Regiment. They joined the regiment in the field on 22 November, eleven days after the Armistice had brought an end to the fighting. On 7 June 1919 he was one of twenty-two men of the North Irish Horse Cyclist Regiment who volunteered to transfer to the Army Cyclist Corps (No.23920). They were posted to the IV Corps Cyclist Battalion at Rolsdorf, part of the Army of Occupation on the Rhine.
Andrews was demobilised and transferred to Class Z, Army Reserve, on 9 November 1919.
At the time of the 1939 Register Andrews was living at 13 Westerdale Road, Charlton, Greenwich, with his wife and two of his children, and working as a 'civil service press operator (coins)'. By 1972 he was still living at Westerdale Road, having retired as a Royal Mint storeman. He died on 14 March that year in the Greenwich District Hospital.