(Herbert) George Fuller was born on the 19th November 1895 in Carleton Rode. His father, George, was a cattleman from New Buckenham and his mother, Jane Self, came from Tibenham.
By 1911, the family were living on the Turnpike. George was a grocer’s errand boy. He had a sister, Maud May (aged 10) and a younger brother, Edward Albert (known as Ted). Also living with them was Frank Thomas Self, Jane’s four-year-old nephew from Tibenham.
School records show that the children suffered from a variety of illnesses during their school lives, including scarlet fever and chickenpox.
George was part of the 3rd Norfolk (Special Reserve) Battalion which was sent to Felixstowe on 23rd July 1915. Volunteers were requested to join the 1st Essex Battalion – 300 came forward, including George. They embarked on the Royal Edward on the 28th July at Avonmouth and set sail for Gallipoli. On the 13th August, the soldiers on board had just completed boat drill and were stowing away their kit when they were torpedoed by UB14. The ship sank into the Aegean Sea. Out of the 1,586 men on board, somewhere between 900 and 1000 men were lost. British propaganda at the time claimed 132 had died. The Essex Regiment lost 174 men, 172 of which were volunteers from the Norfolks. George is remembered on the Helles Memorial.
Further children were born to George and Jane, including a boy in 1917 whom they named Herbert John in honour of his dead brother. He can be seen in a photograph of Carleton Rode schoolchildren taken in the mid-1920s.
We are very grateful to Herbert’s son, Kenny, for contacting the website and providing the following photographs of his grandparents, George and Jane, who moved from the Turnpike into the Council Houses built during the interwar period; his father in his WWII uniform, and one of his aunt, Jessie, born in 1912.
