Vernon Peed Gaches
8 December 1879 - 21 September 1917

Vernon Gaches came from a well-known Peterborough family, his grandfather had been the first Town Clerk. His father, George, was an Old Petriburgian - the School Archives have a photograph of him in The King's School rugby team in September 1862.

George was married to Emma (née Row) in 1873. Vernon was born on 8 December 1879, but his father died aged 33 within the year, from a combination of a bad cricket injury and typhoid fever. Emma had to bring up Vernon and his two sisters, aged 4 and 6, by herself. At the time of the 1881 census, Emma and family were living in Granville St. In 1882 she remarried, a Mr Hamnet Clark, and they went to live in Newport, Shropshire, and later Chippenham in Wiltshire.

Vernon entered The Royal Masonic Institution for Boys (Wood Green, London) in 1888, as his father had been a member of St. Peter's Masonic Lodge no.442 in Peterborough. He left there in December 1894 and joined The King’s School aged 16 in January 1895. He was 5 feet 11 and a half, with a fresh complexion and brown hair. We know he was living, not with his mother but with his guardian, uncle Henry Cecil Gaches, a solicitor, coroner and registrar of the County Court off London Road, who lived at ‘Hollymede’, Park Road. Later that same year, having been at King's just under a year, Vernon left school, probably to take up an apprenticeship in a local engineering firm, as he is later described as a fitter and turner.

It is probable that in late 1895 or early 1896 he joined the Northamptonshire Regiment and later served in South Africa, hence he is missing from the 1901 census. He may have returned to Britain to complete his apprenticeship, or to attend his cousin's wedding to Sidney Cook in 1904. He later returned to South Africa, and by 1906 was serving in the Natal Police Force. He took part in the German South West Africa Campaign, at the same time as Lts. Snow and Flecknoe. He then transferred to German East Africa, today Tanzania, where he was involved as an engineer with the 1st South African Infantry Brigade in the fighting around Mt. Kilimanjaro. He suffered badly from malaria, needing hospital treatment on four occasions between August 1916 and February 1917, when he was demobilised and shipped back to Cape Town to convalesce.
In 1916, while Vernon was in East Africa, the South Africans had gone to France, where they saw considerable service and earned undying fame in the battle for Delville Road 15-20 July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Of the 3152 South African officers and men who started the battle, only 143 came out of the wood alive.

Vernon was soon fit again, rejoined the forces, this time the 3rd Regiment South African Infantry, and set sail for England on board the MS. Walmer Castle. He crossed to France on 22nd June from Southampton to Le Havre, and went on to serve both in the Water Supply Battalion, and as a Dresser in the South African Veterinary Corps. Vernon saw just 3 months service, before going missing on 21 September 1917. He was then presumed killed in action somewhere in the Ypres Salient, aged 37. His body was never found, and so he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres.
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