Soldier Record

Hugo Harrison Jackson was the only child of Harrison and Lucy Jackson and was born in 1890 in Altrincham, Cheshire. The family then moved to Kendal in Cumbria. The family were Quakers and Hugo was my grandmother's first cousin. He attended Stramongate School and became a science teacher.

When war broke out in 1914, being a pacifist by religious conviction, Hugo joined the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) and, after some initial training, went over to Belgium in November 1914. The FAU initially supplied their own vehicles and worked for the Belgian Army. Subsequently they became part of the Services Sanitaires Anglaises (SSA) of the French Army which then supplied their vehicles. Several units of the SSA were manned entirely by the FAU and Hugo was part of SSA14. For some time he organized stores but pressed to be allowed to go out with the ambulances. Whilst moving the sick and injured in Picardy along the Aisne front in May 1918, his ambulance became caught up in a rapidly shifting battlefront and was hit by a shell. The driver, N. Gripper was killed outright and Hugo did not survive the journey to the dressings station. He is buried in the joint Anglo-French Military Cemetery at Vailly in France beside his colleague.

He, along with many of his SSA colleagues, both FAU and other Convoys, was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. I have the utmost respect for him and his FAU colleagues as they made the decision to put their own lives at risk for the good of their fellow man.

On the picture, Hugo Harrison Jackson aged 24