Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

84 children of William Hinde (later Lt-Colonel in the Royal Engineers) and his wife Mildred, née Ilott. 144 By 1909 the family was living at Crowthorne, Berkshire, in a house owned by nearby Wellington College, where William had been a pupil in the 1870s, and where Harold began as a day boy in January 1909. After a year at Wellington, Harold’s education mysteriously shifted to Blundell’s School in Devon. I’d like to think that there is some slightly sinister, or at least slightly mischievous, reason for this move, but I suspect that it was something more prosaic: perhaps his parents just felt he would be better served by boarding at a school well away from home. Details of Hinde’s academic record have not survived, but he was evidently a strong and versatile sportsman, reaching the Blundell’s School first teams in rugby, cricket and hockey, and also distinguishing himself in tennis, swimming and diving. His physical strength was shown when he won the ‘throwing the cricket ball’ event at Blundell’s in 1913 with the remarkable distance, for a 17-year-old, of 113 yards 2½ inches. In the autumn of 1913 he went to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, back close to the family home, and his military career began in earnest when he was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps (or ASC as it then was) a fortnight after the outbreak of the First World War. He served throughout the war in France and Belgium, apart from a brief period in 1915 when he was invalided home, and as well as being once mentioned in dispatches he was, in 1919, awarded the OBE for his war service. He continued his military career at home until 1924, when he was posted to Egypt where he stayed until 1930. After more time on the home front he served in Palestine from 1936 to 1938. He spent the Second World War in senior posts in Supplies and Transport in Norway, France, Belgium, North Africa and Italy, receiving four more mentions in dispatches (two in 1940, two in 1945) and being awarded the CBE in 1943 in recognition of his ‘sound planning, execution and organising ability [and] work of a consistently high order’. For his wartime services he also received decorations from the USA (Officer of the Legion of Merit, and Bronze Star), Luxembourg (Commander of the Order of Couronne de Chene) and France (Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur). After the war he spent a period as commandant of the RASC School at Aldershot, before spending his last three years in the Army as Director of Supplies and Transport for the Middle East Land Forces. From 1947 he was also an aide de camp to the King, not quite as distinguished a post as it sounds, but nevertheless a fine reward for an honourable military career. He retired from the Army in September 1950 just after his 55th birthday. For his long and distinguished services, Brigadier Hinde, as he had become 144 I have been unable to establish any link with the family of a more famous cricketing Ilott. In the Wickets Ready to play. Hinde in 1913.