Biography:
Garratt Primrose Jenkins was born 30 November 1897, the son of Major Adam Primrose Jenkins of Morestead Grove, Winchester. His mother was Maria Alys Jenkins, nee Garratt, of County Down, and brother of Edward Adam Primrose Jenkins (D 1923-1929).
He came to Winchester College from Horris Hill as an Exhibitioner in September 1911 and was in D House, Fearon's. He reached Sixth Book in 1914, and the year after won the King's Silver Medal for Latin Speech: he was also a leading member of the Shakespeare Society.
Garratt left Winchester in December 1915 for RMA Woolwich (where he won the Tombs Memorial Scholarship) and went to France at the end of 1916 with the RFA. He served successively in a trench mortar battery (having what The Wykehamist described as a 'lively time'), a field battery in the Guards Division and for six weeks on the staff, being eventually returned to his battery at his own request. In August 1917, he was slightly wounded in the eye. On two occasions he acted with conspicuous gallantry in assisting to extinguish fires which had broken out in ammunitions dumps.
He was killed in his sleep, with six others, at Elverdinghe during the night of September 7/8 1917, by a bomb dropped from an aeroplane, and is buried in Grave III.B.9 of the Canada Farm Cemetery.
In his obituary in The Wykehamist he was quoted 'Winchester seems so far away, once you have left. Just a description of Southgate Street, as seen at this moment from Culver House door, would be far more acceptable than any novel out here'.