Killed in action aged 37
Buried in Dar Es Salaam War Cemetery, Tanzania Plot 4. D. 1.
Hugh was born in Kensington, London, the seventh of the nine children, and the younger of the two sons, of Joseph Plaskitt, a solicitor with offices at l9 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and his wife Emily Julia Cowie. The family lived at 6, The Grove, The Boltons, Kensington. Hugh was baptised at St. Luke’s Church, Kensington on 27 November.
Hugh was educated at Westminster School, where he played cricket, and came up to Christ Church in 1899. The following summer he played tennis for the University against Cambridge partnering T.D. Rudkin in the Doubles. He played in the Singles at Wimbledon, having a bye into the second round in which he was beaten 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 by F. Payn. In 1901, Hugh played for the University in both the singles and the doubles.
At the time of the 1901 census, Hugh was staying with a clergyman at Bishops Stortford. In 1910, he married his cousin Norah Francis Cowie. They had two daughters, Evenlode M. Plaskitt born in Watford in 1911 and Naomi Merlith Plaskitt born in 1913.
Hugh Plaskitt died of malaria contracted while on active service in the Army Service Corps in Africa.
The unsung heroes of the British army in the Great War - the ASC, Ally Sloper's Cavalry. Soldiers can not fight without food, equipment and ammunition. In the Great War, the vast majority of this tonnage, supplying a vast army on many fronts, was supplied from Britain. Using horsed and motor vehicles, railways and waterways, the ASC performed prodigious feats of logistics and were one of the great strengths of organisation by which the war was won.
At its peak, the ASC numbered an incredible 10,547 officers and 315,334 men. In addition were tens of thousands of Indian, Egyptian, Chinese and other native labourers, carriers and stores men, under orders of the ASC. Yet this vast, sprawling organisation - so vital to enabling the army to fight - merits just four mentions in the Official History of the war.