Hugh Kidman was one of four children of George Edward Kidman and Clara (née Newton). He was born in 1889 in East Adderbury, near Banbury, Oxfordshire where his parents were farmers and was baptised at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Adderbury on 8th January 1890.

By 1901 the family had taken over a farm in Waterstock, near Wheatley and Hugh went to Lord Williams’s Grammar
School in Thame. On leaving school he took up farming, working for his father.

In 1912 he enlisted with the local Territorials, the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars (Regt No 1727). When the Regiment was mobilised at the start of World War One, the 1/1st Battalion embarked for France on 19th September 1914 and were the first territorial unit to see action in the war.

They were part of the 4th Cavalry Brigade of the 2nd Cavalry Division, but spent much of the early war years until the spring of 1917 in defensive positions, waiting for the opportunity of a strategic breakthrough. It never came and they had to spend much of their time dismounted, either in trench working parties or as fighting infantry.

In March 1918 the Germans launched their spring offensive on the Somme and the 1st Battalion was heavily involved in the fighting south of Saint-Quentin. On 23rd March Hugh was posted missing and it was subsequently revealed that he
had been wounded and taken to a German hospital where he died of his wounds on 30th March. He was 29 years old.

285069 Sergeant Hugh Kidman, Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars, is buried in the Maubeuge-Centre Cemetery, Nord.