Sgt Albert Hinks, 2382, B Company, 1/5th Beds Regt, was killed in action at Gallipoli on August 16th, 1915. It marked a double tragedy for his widow Clara Elizabeth, who lost her baby just a week before the sergeant sailed for the Dardanelles.

The only son of Frederick and Elizabeth Hinks, of 36 Windsor Street, Luton, Sgt Hinks was born in Mansfield, Notts in the early summer of 1887.

Official notification of his death had not been received by Clara before a War Office form arrived for her to claim her widow's pension. However, Capt E. T. Maier, commander of her husband's company, did send a letter of sympathy. In it he wrote: "As you know I have known your husband since he did any soldiering and have always found him a man who did his duty - whatever it was and wherever it took him. All the NCOs and men of the Company as well as myself feel his loss very keenly and can only console ourselves with the thought that he died for his country and not in vain. He held on to the line he helped to win and his grave is on the soil held by his own regiment. Your other recent loss I feel will with this blow be a severe one, but I trust that with God's help you will bear up and remember what we all feel, that we would sacrifice anything than that the horrors of war should be carried on to our own countryside."

First news that Sgt Hinks had fallen came via Mr Edwards, of Russell Street, brother of another man at the Front, and then a relative heard the news via a colleague at the Diamond Foundry, Dallow Road, via another letter.

Sgt Hinks had worked in the straw trade for a number of years for Tress & Co, Albion Road, Luton, and had been in the Territorials for about eight years. He was a member of Christ Church congregation.

He married Clara Elizabeth Barton, from Derby, in Luton in the last quarter of 1913. At the time of the 1911 Census Clara was living in a boarding house at 54 Grove Road, Luton. She returned to her family at Derby following the deaths of her baby and husband.