According to his father, before the war Reginald was ‘a clerk in the Guildford office of the National Deposit Friendly Society’, as reported in The Surrey Advertiser on 23 November 1918. The date he joined the 25th Bn., Kings Liverpool Regiment is not known. His Service Number was 108219 and Joe Devereaux, historian of the Kings Liverpool Regiment, suggested that based on his number he had not long enlisted before he was killed.

The following information was researched and shared by Yves Durin of GECEBAS (Groupe d’études des cimetières de l’empire Britannique d’Ablain et Souchez). Just before his death Reginald’s Battalion was near the village of Prémesques (in the Nord department which is on the border with Belgium), near Wez-Macquart, hamlet of Ennetières en Weppe. Reginald apparently went missing in action on 8 October 1918. The Battalion’s war diaries for 9 and 10 October 1918 record the disappearance of officers and soldiers during an enemy raid on a post near the ‘ferme de l’Eperonnerie’, and of a patrol in the same sector on the night of October 8-9, 1918.

Reginald was at first listed as ‘Missing’, not dead, which meant that in theory he might still have been alive as a prisoner of war or be lying wounded in a hospital somewhere. This was still his status as of 23 November 1918, ie well after the end of the War. Eventually however he was presumed dead, aged 19.

Records at the Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery at Souchez reveal that Reginald’s fate was eventually discovered in August 1925. His body was found in Prémesques churchyard by a Workman engaged in clearing away debris and soil round the church. He was identified by ‘Clothing, Boots and Disc’. His remains were transferred from there to rest in the Cabaret-Rouge Cemetery. His presumed date of death is 8 October 1918, the date of his disappearance, and there is no indication that he was taken prisoner.