Source: Michael Doyle Their Name Liveth For Evermore: The Great War Roll of Honour for Leicestershire and Rutland.
He was the son of George and Emily Walker, and one of seven children; Ada born 31st March 1893, Fanny 11th January 1898, Frederick 1st July 1900, Herbert 6th November 1903, Emily 8th September 1905 and Arthur 18th January 1910. Henry, always known as Harry was a miner at South Leicestershire Colliery at Ellistown, he was also a chorister at the local church and attended Sunday school. Harry enlisted in the first week of the war into the 1st/5th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment. In the early hours of 2nd July 1915 Harry narrowly avoided death in the infamous Trench 50 near to Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient, when a whizz bang landed and only the zig zag nature of the trench saved his life. It was a shock nevertheless. The Germans were able to keep their batteries a mere 180 yards behind their frontline, and pinpointed some area of the Battalion frontline to be hit every three hours. Because the batteries were so close the men heard the “bang” before the “whizz,” so there was little opportunity to escape. A few hours afterwards, Harry lost his life. It was early morning and, as always, even in this perilous area, the birds were in chorus, when the sudden crack of a rifle silenced them for a few minutes. Harry, on guard duty had raised his head a little too far and he slumped to the bottom of the trench. Friends rushed to help him but it was evident that he had died within seconds. Harry had written to his cousin in Ravenstone the day before he died:- “I received your welcome letter. We have not done a lot this last fortnight but they will soon have something in store for us. This is our second day in these trenches and we are getting on fine but we do get shelled a lot. Two of us went out on our hands and knees to see what we could find and ran into a German trench. We did scuttle! One chap let his horse run away the day before we came here, so he came with us and got killed the next day. We have just had a fresh lot to reinforce us. Girls who write letters out here have caused many a chap to get killed. They write asking for this and that and the chaps go out to try and get them and many a one never comes back. We are about a thousand yards from the Germans now, because we took this trench off them and they had to fall back into a wood.” The War Diary for today records. ZILLEBEKE. Normal. Enemy shelled trenches north of 4. with high explosive.