Current Information:

Age-22

56, Endlesham Road, Balham

Houplines Communal Cemetery, France

For most of the winter of 1914-1915, the 16th London battalion of 18 Brigade, 6th Division were holding trenches opposite the village of Frelinghien on the French-Belgian border just to the north of Armentières with a system of reliefs whereby individual companies moved back for 4 day periods of rest. The battalion diary entry for 13th February, the day on which John Hayden was killed, recorded that there was heavy retaliatory fire from the enemy after one of their work parties had been fired on.