Died of wounds received in action aged 21
Grave unknown
James Howard was born in Derby, the eldest of the four children of the Revd. Walter Howard Stables. M.A., Mus.B. and his wife Emily Morse. His father died of pneumonia in 1906 whilst Vicar of St. Chad’s, Leeds where the Lady Chapel is a memorial to him.
James was educated at St. David’s, Reigate and Winchester and came up to Christ Church in 1913.
He volunteered for active service soon after the outbreak of war, and joined the 6th Hampshire Regt. on 29 September 1914, serving in India from the following November. He was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant 15th Gurkha Rifles on 1 August 1915 and promoted Lieutenant in August 1916. He served at Abbottabad, North-West Frontier, for a year and, subsequently, with the Indian Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia from August 1916, being attached to the 2/4th Gurkha Rifles.
James was reported severely wounded and missing after the fighting at Sanna-i-yat on 17 February 1917, and was assumed to have died of wounds on or about that date.
He is commemorated on the Basra Memorial Panel 55.
His name is on the War Memorial in Haslemere, Surrey where his mother lived.
A friend wrote “Had Stables lived, he would undoubtedly have made a name for himself in the literary and musical world he had that in him which, for want of a better word, men call genius.’’