Frank Herbert Parker was born on 11 February 1889 in Aldershot.\u00a0\u00a0 He was the son of a sergeant (later a Company Sergeant Major) in the Royal Engineers (RE) and he was to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately Frank\u2019s military records do not seem to be available, but his father\u2019s service is recorded in reasonable detail, so we can learn a lot about Frank\u2019s childhood from it.\u00a0 Frank\u2019s father, John Parker, was born in Devon and joined the RE in 1876 as a carpenter when he was in his early twenties.\u00a0 According to one of its official historians, the RE customarily drew its \u2018rank and file\u2026from the class of artificers or tradesmen\u2019.\u00a0 John served in two tours of duty in Southern Africa, where he earned a medal in 1879, and was later stationed at Aldershot, Curragh Camp in Ireland, Chatham, Monmouth and Beaumaris. In South Africa John took part in the Anglo-Zulu War, the first Boer War and the Bechuanaland expedition of 1884-5.\u00a0 He was awarded the South Africa medal with clasp, and the long service medal.<\/p>\n
John earned regular promotions through the ranks and in 1886 he married a Canadian woman called Emily Agate, who was ten years younger than him.\u00a0 Their first child, Evelyn, was born at Curragh in 1887 but by the time of Frank\u2019s birth in 1889 the family were stationed in Aldershot.\u00a0 They were still in Aldershot at the time of the 1891 census when Frank was two years old and his younger brother, Frederick was nine months old.<\/p>\n
In 1893 John was promoted to Sergeant Major. This was an honoured position for an ordinary soldier to attain.\u00a0 In 1897, after twenty-one years in the service, he was granted permission to remain in the army.\u00a0 By 1901 he was based with the Royal Anglesey RE in Beaumaris, North Wales.\u00a0 On census night that year John was at a hotel in Wrexham, although Emily, Evelyn and Frank and Frederick were all at home at 11 Margaret Street, Beaumaris.\u00a0 The Parkers\u2019 youngest daughter was born in Anglesey c.1903.<\/p>\n
In 1904 John was discharged from his regiment at the age of fifty.\u00a0 The family, at that point still in Beaumaris, intended to move to Chatham, a town where John had been stationed in 1893.\u00a0 Frank was fifteen years old when his father retired from the army, and perhaps was starting to learn carpentry from his father. John\u2019s army record had described him as \u2018a very superior cabinet maker and carpenter\u2019.<\/p>\n
Having been brought up entirely in barrack towns, and lived the itinerant lifestyle of an army child, it is perhaps no surprise that Frank also enlisted with the RE, joining the regiment in Chatham.\u00a0 In 1911 he was stationed in Egypt with the 2nd<\/sup> Field Company of the RE.\u00a0 He was aged twenty-three, and described on the census form as a sapper, a carpenter, and unmarried.\u00a0 Although he probably had some carpentry skill when he entered the force, the RE took in young recruits and gave them further training.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Frank\u2019s parents were living at Crown House, Rainham Road, Gillingham, with his two sisters.\u00a0 In September 1914, John, now resident with Emily in Elm Cottage, Wainscott, volunteered for the army reserve. \u00a0Frederick, having been allegedly turned down for military service in Chatham because he was too short, served an apprenticeship in Gillingham before emigrating to Western Australia where he became a farmer. However, on the outbreak of the First World War Frederick volunteered for the Imperial Australian Forces in Helena Valley, near Perth.\u00a0 Lance-corporal Frederick Parker was injured at Gallipoli in 1915 and after recuperation in a Birmingham military hospital he served in France in 1918.\u00a0 He undertook a motor fitting course with a company in Rochester before returning to live in Western Australia. In 1967 he applied to the Australian government for a Gallipoli medal.<\/p>\n Frank, meanwhile must have received rapid promotion through the ranks – probably because of the war conditions after 1914, in which the size of the RE increased rapidly – as at the time of his death he was an Acting Company Sergeant Major.\u00a0 On the outbreak of war the 2nd<\/sup> Field Company of the RE joined the 8th<\/sup> division<\/a> of the army, returning from Egypt in October and reinforcing the British Expeditionary Force the following month.<\/p>\n