Powell K Pte 1st Honourable Artillery Company
PRIVATE KENNETH POWELL
1ST INFANTRY BATTALION, 4TH COMPANY, HONOURABLE ARTILLERY COMPANY
KENNETH POWELL Was the second son of James and Mary Powell, of Reigate, Surrey.
He entered the School in 1899, was in the XV in 1902, 1903, and was Captain in the Spring Term of 1904. He represented the School in Racquets in 1903, 1904, and held the first Athletic Cup in both these years.
From Rugby he went, in 1904, to King’s College, Cambridge, and took a Second Class in the History Tripos. He represented his University in the Hurdles against Oxford for four years (1905-08), in the last year making the inter-University record. In the year 1907 he was elected President of the Cambridge University Athletic Club. He represented Great Britain twice in the Hurdles, once in the Olympic Games in London, 1908, and again at Stockholm in 1912, where he reached the Final out of 60 Competitors, and was only beaten by two feet. He also reecived his blue at Cambridge for Lawn Tennis for three years, and was in the first flight of players in the All England Lawn Tennis Championships at Wimbledon.
When the War broke out he was among the first of the prominent athletes to respond to the national call. He left Southampton with the H.A.C. 1st Battalion in September, 1914, and was soon at the Front, where he endured the rigours of the cold, wet weather in the advanced trenches until his death in February. He was hit by a chance bullet at 10 p.m. on the 17th when returning from fatigue work in the advanced trenches. He was brought after some inevitable delay to No. 7 Field Ambulance, near Locre, Flanders, and an operation was performed about 8.45 a.m., but he sank and died about 9.35 on February 18th, 1915. He was buried in the little churchyard at Locre. Age 29.
In a notice of him which appeared in the “Meteor,” of March 19th, 1915 (No. 583), it is said that
“No man ever changed so little in the fifteen years from his arrival at a Public School. From first to last he was the same entirely simple, straight and unassuming fellow, whom all respected, most liked, and many loved. To anyone who knew him, the idea of Kenneth Powell showing arrogance or swagger is simply an absurdity. Yet no one could follow more unswervingly his own straight path, all unconscious of what others might think, and quite unsuspecting the influence he exercised. It is not very uncommon to see a nature that instinctively attracts to itself others of a like fashion. But he had the rarer and far more subtle magnetism that drew to itself what was good in natures of little excellence; so that many of us, wholly below his calibre, honestly called him friend and were unreservedly admitted to his friendship. To refrain from ill-temper, or ill-language, or coarseness in word or act these are common and negative virtues; a very few men carry that gentle power which unconsciously curbs the tongues and, what is more, the thoughts of others. Of these few he was one. No one in all this war hated more heartily the whole business of killing and wounding. Yet just before his death he was chosen as one of a volunteer party of ‘snipers’ to ply their dangerous work in the posts most exposed to fire. Previously rather a theoretical ‘pacifist’ he was in the trenches because he thought he ought to be, and for no other reason. Because he thought that, and gave his life to prove it, not only is there unaffected grief in Rugby and his own town of Reigate, but in many a future gathering at Queen’s Club and Wimbledon, on the Harlequins’ Football Ground at Twickenham, in the Rugby Mission Clubs, and in City houses, where business had made him known, men will realise that a unique personality has been taken away; and in the hearts of a few closer friends there is something like despair that one so gifted and so lovable is gone, yet a great joy and encouragement to know that gentleness and simplicity and mere goodness can effect what cannot be achieved by natures more powerful or intellects keener and more ambitious than his.”