Born in Kensington in 1897, Hugonin became a career soldier after training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned into the Royal Artillery on 15 October 1915. By the 1930s he was married with children, and in 1937 he travelled to India with his family on the ship "Dilwarra". He was posted to Singapore in January 1939 with the 3rd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Artillery, and became a prisoner of war of the Japanese in February 1942 at the Fall of Singapore, during the Second World War. In September 1946, when he held the rank of acting lieutenant colonel, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his gallant war service as a prisoner of war, during which he had shown great defiance of the Japanese, had destroyed enemy equipment, and had defended his men, even to the extent of taking beatings for others. He managed to play first-class cricket during the middle years of his Army service.