Bank Top House
Ronald Henry Baugust
Private 1389 - 15th Bn. Royal Warwickshire Regiment
Killed in action Sunday 3rd September 1916 aged 25
No known grave, but commemorated on Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France
Ronald Henry Baugust was the son of Henry Thomas and Clara, born in Hilderstone,
Near Stone, Staffs in 1891.
Henry Thomas Baugust married Clara Annie Bates in Leicester in 1886. They had both
become teachers.
On 1891 census, the couple were working in Hilderstone, near Stone in Staffordshire,
living in the school house with their one year old son, Reginald Edmund. A daughter,
Margeret H. was also born in Hilderstone, in 1894.
(The census was taken just before Ronald was born).
Henry became head teacher at Gnosall Parochial
School on 24
th
June 1895. Clara was also engaged to
teach at the same time. An older sister, Constance
Annie was christened in the parish in 1895.
On 29
th
November 1895 their 5 year old son Reginald
Edmund died of meningitis.
The 1901 census shows the family were living at Bank
Top House (which coincidentally had been a private
school in earlier times).
By 1911 Henry and Clara’s family appears to have split up.
15 years old daughter Constance Annie BAUGUST is a student living with an uncle in
Leicester and her sister, Margaret Helen Baugust was living with, and housekeeping for,
her widowed grandfather (retired shoemaker) and her aunt (school mistress) in Leicester.
It seems that in the 1911 Canadian census, John Baugust is a boarder in Assiniboia,
Saskatchewan, Canada. And from later information that his parents were in Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada
However, their 19 years old son Ronald Henry is a Bank Clerk living at 389 Hartshill Road
in Stoke on Trent as a boarder.
Ronald Henry Baugust enlisted into 15th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment in
Birmingham and entered the “theatre of war” in France on 21 November 1915.
He was killed in action on Sunday 3rd September 1916 aged 25.
No known grave, but commemorated on Thiepval Memorial, Somme, France -
Pier and
Face 9A 9B and 10B.
Thiepval Memorial, Somme
Historical Information
On 1 July 1916, supported by a French attack to the south, thirteen divisions of
Commonwealth forces launched an offensive on a line from north of Gommecourt to
Maricourt. Despite a preliminary bombardment lasting seven days, the German defences
were barely touched and the attack met unexpectedly fierce resistance. Losses were
catastrophic and with only minimal advances on the southern flank, the initial attack was a
failure. In the following weeks, huge resources of manpower and equipment were
deployed in an attempt to exploit the modest successes of the first day. However, the
German Army resisted tenaciously and repeated attacks and counter attacks meant a
major battle for every village, copse and farmhouse gained. At the end of September,
Thiepval was finally captured. The village had been an original objective of 1 July. Attacks
north and east continued throughout October and into November in increasingly difficult
weather conditions. The Battle of the Somme finally ended on 18 November with the onset
of winter.
In the spring of 1917, the German forces fell back to their newly prepared defences, the
Hindenburg Line, and there were no further significant engagements in the Somme sector
until the Germans mounted their major offensive in March 1918.
The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, bears the names of
more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who
died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of
those commemorated died between July and November 1916. The memorial also serves
as an Anglo-French Battle Memorial in recognition of the joint nature of the 1916 offensive
and a small cemetery containing equal numbers of Commonwealth and French graves lies
at the foot of the memorial.