Bertie Barber was born Herbert John in Carleton Rode in 1892. His parents were William George, a yardman on a farm, and Alice Laura (nee Quantrill from Wymondham); they lived at ‘The Gates’ Rode Lane (near Kendal Lodge), the same location as the Leverett family (see Ambrose). Bertie had one younger sister who was variously recorded as Sarah Elizabeth, Elizabeth Sarah, Eliza or Bessie. She left school in 1908 and went to work as a domestic servant at Holt House School for Girls in Fakenham run by the McLaren sisters and their mother. We believe that she married a Benjamin Smith in 1915. Bertie’s mother died in 1903 and his father remarried; Margaret Sage (from Kenninghall.)
The family had a Willie Barber (professional soldier) lodging with them in 1911. Although he is not recorded on the Census as being a family member, we know from previous census returns and documents that he is William George’s brother and therefore Bertie’s uncle.
Bertie left school in September 1905 and by 1911 was a bricklayer’s labourer.
Bertie joined the Norfolk Regiment 7th Battalion as a Private and was posted to France in October 1915. Three months later on the 10th January 1916 he was killed and is buried at the Guards Cemetery, Windy Corner in Cuinchy, Pas de Calais.
Robert Graves, the famous poet and novelist, was stationed at Cuinchy several times and in a passage from his autobiography, Goodbye To All That, he describes one of the horrors that men had to deal with in the Great War – rats:
“Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly.”
The constant strain of being under fire and in danger would have been bad enough; but rats, lice and other privations must have made life almost unbearable for the front-line soldiers at times.