Hi Pak,
I'm not sure how much else you've already discovered about RED Kent so apologies if I'm telling you stuff you already know. Obviously if you have his obituary you know he died on 27 May 1918 while commanding the 4th battalion of Alexandra (Princess of Wales's Own) Yorkshire Regiment aka The Green Howards. He had only been promoted to the rank of acting Lt Col on 25 Apr 1918 from the temporary rank of captain.
Prior to that he had been with the training Reserve. However the Green Howards was not the unit he first went into action with during WW1. It appears that, following his brief stint with the 2nd Cadet Battalion of The Royal West Surrey Regiment (circa 1906 -1908) he was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment as temporary Lt on 10 Sept 1914 and promoted temporary Captain on 13 Oct 1914. He went to France with that Regiment on 15 July 1915 and earned the 1914-15 Star. It was presumably while he was serving with the Manchester Regt that he he was mentioned in dispatches in June 1916 (LG 15 Jun 1916 page 5948). By 22 Feb 1917 he was with the Green Howards. Interestingly he is recorded on the South Africa Roll of Honour, implying that he was living there prior to the start of the war. He was posthumously awarded the British Victory Medal and the War Medal. He was also awarded the Croix de Guerre (LG Supplement 7 Jan 1919 page 313).
I further assume that you know that his parents were Daniel Kent (b.1851) a house painter living at Workhouse Lane, Keele, Staffordshire (1881, 1891 and 1901 censuses) with wife Lucy Elizabeth nee Borrington (b 1850), along with two sisters and a brother. His parents placed an in memoriam notice in the Staffordshire Sentinel on the first anniversary of his death.
You also obviously know that his wife was Alice (maiden name not known) born 8 Feb 1872 who was living as a widow on a war pension at 23 Lauriston Road, Brighton in September 1939 and who died in the first quarter of 1951 in Brighton. At the time of RED's death the family were at Oak Dene, Ferndown, and remained there at least until 1921 according to the electoral registers.
Vivian Carlyle Dawson Kent (born 24 May 1900) first appeared in the ER for 1919 as an absentee voter. He is shown as being a Lieutenant in the RAF, serving with the Royal Naval Air Service and ADC to the GOC Malta. That is quite an achievement for a 19 year old. In the Spring 1920 electoral register for Ferndown, Hampshire he is shown along with his mother, but does not appear in the subsequent ERs there. At the same time (10 Jan 1920) the London Gazette reports that 2Lt VCH Dawson Kent had been placed on the unposted list. It is not clear how long he remained in the RAF. Much later during WW2 he is serving in the Army, but without checking the Army Lists for the details, I haven't got his full Army career. Suffice it to say he is named in a 1941 London Gazette entry, and by August 1942 he's a temporary captain in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.
Anyway, back in September 1939 he was a commercial traveller dealing in toys and household goods, living at 16 South Mead, Manchester with his wife May Eileen Marie (born 03 July 1903) nee Watson. They married in the first quarter of 1927 in the Wirral and went on to have two children, Maureen born 1928 Manchester South and Valerie born 1930 Stratford on Avon. Neither child was with their parents in September 1939. In 1931 the family are living at Crandean, Maidenhead Road, Warwick. There is a 1936 Manchester rate book entry for the family at 34 South Drive, Manchester, where the name was been added after the previous occupier's name was crossed out, implying that the family had arrived during that year. As you are probably aware Vivian Carlyle died at Bucklow, Cheshire in 1972 and his widow May in December 1986 at Watford. Both of Vivian's daughters later married but I won't give their married names here as it is possible both are still alive. Intriguingly there was a female Dawson Kent born in 2003 in Hampshire with the mother's maiden name Dawson - possibly part of the same family I wonder?
As for RED's daughter, Doreen Joyce I have only found a few details. She was born on 7 November 1904. She was eligible for a small war pension of £24 pa due to her father's death in service until she reached the age of 21. In September 1939 she was working as a governess in the home of a retired Army Major (ex Sussex Regt) in Chichester and single. In fact she remained single until her death in November 1984 in Brighton. Did she perhaps have a connection to Brighton through her mother's residence there?
It might be worth contacting the
Green Howards Museum on the off chance that they have any details about RED's death. The war diary is available at TNA but I haven't attempted to access it.
