Arthur Hugh Sebborn was born on the 15th April 1893; he was the son of Henry and Sarah Sebborn, both of whom were school teachers. On 16th January 1909, Arthur enlisted in the Royal Marines Light Infantry, where his occupation was given as a musician. He was then sent to the Royal Naval School of Music, with the rank of Band Boy, where he played clarinet and violin. When he turned eighteen, Arthur was promoted to Musician and posted to Africa, before returning to the Royal Naval School of Music once more. Prior to his posting, Arthur was marked as being very good in character, but after his return, it was dropped to bad, and on 3rd April 1912, he left the Royal Marines having been “Discharged with Ignominy.”

Arthur responded to an advertisement in a paper placed by St Audry’s Hospital; they were looking for musicians or sportsmen to join the staff as as attendants. Arthur started work there on 5th July 1912. On the 4th September 1914, a month after war was declared, Arthur enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment and joined the 9th (Service) Battalion who were training at Shoreham in Kent.

Arthur’s first three months at Shorham were spent under canvas, during which time the weather was appalling. As a result, the battalion was sent into billets in Brighton. In March 1915, Arthur and the battalion returned to Shoreham when their training began in earnest. By mid June, they were based at Blackdown, near Aldershot, awaiting their orders to go to France. On the 30th August, orders came and the majority of the battalion embarked from Folkstone for the short trip to Boulogne. Arthur, however, wasn’t with them.

He joined the battalion later, on the 5th October 1915, in a draft of men sent out as reinforcements after the losses suffered during the Battle of Loos. By this time, the 9th Suffolks were based in the Ypres Salient where they were to remain throughout the winter and into the summer. In July, it was reported in the “Daily Casualty” lists that Private A H Sebborn of the 9th Suffolks had been wounded and he was not to return the battalion.

After recovery from his wounds, Arthur was transferred to the 2nd Battalion, The Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire Regiment) who, in 1917, were based in the Arras area. On 9th April 1917, the Battle of Arras started and the 2nd Wiltshire Battalion were in the thick of it, on the front line during both the First and Second Battles of the Scarpe (9th/12th and 23rd/24th April). Arthur was recorded as being killed in action on the 27th April, in the days after the battle had ended and the troops had remained on the front line. His body was not recovered but he is remembered on the Arras Memorial and on the Melton Memorial at St Andrew’s Church. For his war service, Arthur’s family received the 1914-15 Star and the British War and Victory Medals.

In December 1914, soon after Arthur had enlisted, he married Daisy Kate Mudd, a nurse he had met while they both worked at St Audry’s Hospital. After his death, Daisy moved to Epsom in Surrey and worked at the Horton, County Of London Mental Hospital. In 1939, Daisy was living with her sister and mother in Harwich where she died in December 1981, never having remarried.