Date of Birth
Unknown
College
Borough Road College
Job(s)
Principal of Auckland Training College, New Zealand
Service number
22525
WW1 rank
Private, Lieutenant
New Zealand Expeditionary Force
Theatre of war
Europe
Date of death
4 October 1917
Location of death
Otto Farm Ypres, 3rd Battle of Ypres/Passchendaele
Buried/memorial
Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium (Grave/Memorial reference: XXXVI C 6)
Biography
Second Lieutenant Herbert Albert Edwin Milnes attended BRC from 1893-1894 achieving a full certificate in art and successes in theoretical mechanics and theoretical chemistry. Milnes competed in Rugby for the college, and represented the college at inter-college sports days. He is listed as being destined for teaching in Reading after BRC. He became principal of Auckland Training College where he trained and taught. At the outbreak of the First World War he had been the Principal of Auckland Training College in New Zealand. He enlisted as a private on the 7 March 1916 and was later commissioned into the 3rd Battalion Auckland Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force. During the war it is said that "the boys at the front called him Dad because of the way he looked after them. The men loved him like a father". Milnes' motto is remembered as – "Keep smiling, to the last". He was 43 when he was killed by shellfire at Otto Farm, Ypres during the 3rd Battle of Ypres.
Sources
Entry on p.85 [Roll of Honour page], Mentioned on Framed BRC Roll of Honour, BFSS/2/9/14/2, BFSS/2/9/8/1, 1893 Male applications box., BRCSYG35, Secondary source information provided by Douglas Craik (taken from Commonwealth War Graves Commission), The O.B.’s War Hum and Roll of Service (1918, 4th Edition) 1895 Annual Report