Third Wipers - World War One (from the book "Neath a Foreign Sky" by Paul Allen)
In Remembrance of
- Second Lieutenant Hugh Colborne Graham
- Private William Ernest Foster
- Private James Goodill
- Private Louis Edward Normanton
- Corporal George Ernest Adams
- Gunner Frederick Hunter
- Second Lieutenant John Henry Raymond Salter
- Lieutenant Geoffrey Charles Taylor Salter
- Corporal Nicholas Sheader
- Sergeant William Albert Megginson
- Private John Megginson
- Corporal Frederick Wellburn Watson
- Corporal George William Wynne
- Private Wilfred Dowse Rawling
Apparently overjoyed by the ‘great success’ of the twentieth of September, Haig had immediately issued Plumer and Gough with instructions for the continuance of the assault upon the Gheluvelt Plateu, adding the seemingly nonsensical, ‘the attack is to be carried out on as wide a front as possible to obtain the advantages of attacking on a wide front’…Whilst the two Army commanders had pondered the wisdom of their master’s order, Haig had delivered a map to them on which he had sketched out the projected stages of the forthcoming offensive, which had basically called for the capture of Polygon Wood and the village of Zonnebeke on the 26TH of September. Later, around the 4TH of October, the remainder of the Plateau including the village of Broodseinde would be taken, along with Poelcappelle to the north.
The operation, later dubbed ‘the Battle of Polygon Wood’, had begun at Zero Hour
[5-40am] on Wednesday the 26TH of September and by midday Second and Fifth Armies had been on the verge of capturing all their objectives, albeit at the usual high price. For the meagre three and a half square miles of territory captured, by the time that the operation had officially been closed down on the third of October, the two armies had suffered over fifteen thousand casualties, which had represented around four and a half thousand killed wounded and missing for each square mile gained, fifty per cent more casualties more casualties than the Menin Road battle. The two campaigns in September had together cost over 36,000 casualties for an advance of 2,750 yards. The final objective, Passchendaele Ridge had still lay over 4,500 yards away.
The Ninth Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment had entered the battle during the night of Sunday the thirtieth of September, when the formation had taken over a section of the British front line which had included a position known as ‘Cameron Covert’, which had been located to the south of Polygon Wood.
During the early hours of the following day the Germans had launched a series of determined counter attacks aimed at dislodging the British from their newly won positions. The whole area about the battalion’s positions had been struck by a devastating artillery barrage with had evidently caused chaos amongst the line…’It was tolerably evident from the intensity of the fire and the activity of the enemy aircraft that an attack was imminent, and by this time all means of communication between the front line and Battalion Headquarter, visible or other, had been severed, so that every endeavour was made to re-establish touch by runners, while officers went up to the front to try and clear up the situation. By now, however, the enemy, in addition to his barrages, was placing very heavy vertical barrages [bombing?] along the northern bank of the Reutelbeek and in the area south of Black Watch Corner, so that it was found almost impossible to get forward. It was not until 1pm that the first pair of runners came back with the news that the three right companies had successfully held their ground’… [1]
The Battalion’s ‘C’ Company had not been so fortunate….’about 5am the enemy opened an exceedingly intense barrage on the line running through Cameron Covert; the company holding this front ‘stood to’ and prepared to receive an attack, and half an hour later the enemy was seen advancing against the front in successive waves, when rifle and Lewis gun fire was at once brought to bear. Two of the Lewis guns were, however, almost at once put out of action, one by a shell and the other by a rifle bullet, and the officer in charge of the left platoon Second Lieutenant Wilton, was killed. About five minutes later it was noticed that the battalion on the left had been driven from its front line and that the Germans were following it up closely. For about ten minutes longer the left posts kept up a continuous fire on the enemy, while another Lewis gun was brought into action in place of the two which had been damaged; but by this time the enemy had advanced past the left flank and was well in rear of the position, and in consequence of this the forward posts were withdrawn in a south westerly direction about fifty yards in the vicinity of company headquarters; here the men were reorganized under Lieutenant Bennison, the company commander, and Lieutenant Gibson of the 69TH Trench Mortar Battery, there after going forward to counter attack. During this advance both of these officers had become casualties, and a fresh enemy attack compelled a retirement to a position about one hundred and fifty yards in rear of the old front line…here a determined stand had been made’… [1]
Throughout the remainder of the day the remnants of the Battalion had fought off numerous determined enemy counter attacks, and despite incurring many casualties to the intense shell fire and ground strafing aircraft the unit had managed to hold out.
The 9TH Battalion had remained in the vicinity of ‘Cameron Covert’ until the night of the seventeenth of October, when the remains of the four companies had been relieved, the surviving officers and men moving back into reserve at ‘Clapham Junction, where the customary post battle roll call had revealed the battalion had suffered some seventy one casualties whilst stationed at ‘Cameron Covert’ [Overall during the period the period September to October the 9th Yorkshire Regiment had lost four hundred and thirty one all ranks, killed, wounded, and missing]. Amongst the Battalion’s fifteen officer casualties had been ‘B’ Company’s twenty nine years old; Second Lieutenant Hugh Colborne Graham.
Born at Hull during 1888, at No.165 Beverley Road, Hugh had been the second of three children of Mary Johnstone [formerly Bremner] and Christopher Colborne Graham, a technical chemist and secretary for the Hull based paint, colour, and varnish manufacturing firm of Blundell, Spence & Co Ltd, which had been located in the city’s Beverley Road [the company had also refined and boiled oil at their factory at Hull’s ‘Bank Side’].
By the beginning of the twentieth century the Graham family had been residing at a house named ‘Highmoor’, near the Wharfedale town of Ilkley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The fourteen years old Hugh, had however, been residing in Scarborough’s Filey Road, having been a pupil of Mr. Samuel Servington Savoury’s ‘Bramcote’ Preparatory School. Very little is known of Graham’s time at ‘Bramcote’, the school register merely recording his name and the solitary year that the fourteen years old had remained at the School [1900 –01]. After leaving Bramcote at the end of the Summer Term [July] of 1901, Graham had gone on to Giggleswick School, located near to the North Yorkshire market town of Settle. Hugh had remained at this picturesque school until the summer of 1904, when at the age of eighteen he had ‘gone up’ to Leeds University where he had eventually received a B.Sc. Degree in Science during 1906.
The Graham’s had begun their long association with Scarborough and it’s people during 1905, when Christopher Graham had moved his family to the town to reside at ‘Oriel House’, in Oriel Crescent, located in the affluent South Cliff area of Scarborough. By this time retired, the fifty years old Christopher had soon nonetheless become immersed in the business of running the town, and by November 1911 he had become a Justice of the Peace and eventually the town’s Mayor, a post he would hold for the next six years.
By the outbreak of war Hugh Graham had been in business in Hull. During September 1914 despite being comfortably well heeled and settled into the social life of the city he had enlisted into the army as a Private in the Royal Army Medical Corps [Regimental Number 1608] and as such had served in England and on the Western Front until January 1917 when he had been gazetted as a Second Lieutenant in the Yorkshire Regiment. Graham had subsequently been posted to the 9TH Battalion of the Regiment during June 1917, and had joined the unit with a draft of replacements for the two hundred and sixty five casualties that the battalion had sustained around Hill 60 and Mount Sorrel during the Messines Ridge Operations of the 7TH of June 1917.
Allocated to Captain Maude’s ‘B’Company, throughout the remainder of the summer of 1917 Lieutenant Graham had been stationed with his unit in the Dickebusch area of Flanders, where he had undergone the customary round training programmes and stints in the trenches which had been the lot of the British soldier in the days leading up to Third Wipers. During the first half of August the 9TH Battalion had been camped around the village of Moulle in the Tilques area of Flanders, where the unit had been taking part in ‘special' training in musketry, and open warfare in preparation for the forthcoming offensive.
By mid September Graham and the remainder of his battalion had been billeted in ‘MicMac’ Camp near to Steenvoorde, from where on the 18th the unit had moved to ‘Railway Dugouts’. Here Headquarters, together with ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies, had remained for the night, whilst ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies had made their way to Sanctuary Wood where throughout the night these two units had been heavily shelled with High Explosives and gas shells. During the early hours of the twentieth the Battalion had moved up into their assembly positions at ‘Stirling Castle’ and ‘Sanctuary Wood’ before they had finally gone to their assault positions ready for the attack on Inverness Copse which had killed Privates Perryman and Cappleman.
Officially recorded as having been killed in action on Monday the 1ST of October 1917, Christopher Graham had learnt of his son’s death eight days later. That same day, Tuesday the 9TH, the ‘Hull Daily Mail’ had reported;
‘Lieut. H.C. Graham killed - The Mayor of Scarborough [Mr C.C. Graham] who is well known in Hull, today received news that his youngest son, Sec. Lieut. Hugh Colborne Graham, Yorkshire Regiment, was killed at the front on Oct. 1ST. Deceased was educated at Giggleswick, and obtained his B. Sc. Degree at Leeds University. He was in business in Hull at the outbreak of the war, and at once joined up as a private. He only got his commission at the beginning of the year’…
In Scarborough, the news of Hugh Graham’s death had appeared in the local press three days later. Considering he had been the son of the town’s most prominent citizen, very little had been said;
‘The Mayor’s second son killed - The Mayor has received the sad news that his second son, Second Lieut. Hugh Colborne Graham, Yorkshire Regiment, was killed on October 1ST. He was educated at Leeds University, where he took his B.Sc. Prior to enlisting as a private in the R.A.M.C. He was in business in Hull. He was eventually offered a commission.’…
Apart from the appearance of a short entry in the ‘Mercury’s ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths’ section reproduced that same day, nothing more had been said of the departed officer. There are rumours of a rift existing between father and son, there is, however, as far as it is known, no evidence to support this theory.
The remains of Hugh Graham had been buried close to where he had fallen, the grave marked with a cross. By the end of the war the grave marker had disappeared amongst the detritus of the Ypres battlefield. His final resting place had never been located and his name had eventually been included with those of fellow Yorkshiremen, Privates Perryman and Cappleman, on Panels 52 to 54, and 162A of the ‘Tyne Cot’ Memorial to the Missing at Zonnebeke. In Scarborough, apart from the town’s War Memorial Hugh Colborne Graham’s name had been commemorated on a ‘Roll of Honour’, which had been erected on the south interior wall of Holy Trinity Church, in Trinity Road. The church has by now [2005] been turned into flats, the whereabouts of the memorial, commemorating twenty eight of the church’s former congregation who had lost their lives during the ‘Great War’ is not known.
Hugh Graham’s name can also be found on a broken and alas, very neglected monument in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section G, Terrace, Grave12/13], which also commemorates the officer’s Hull born mother, Mary Johnstone Graham who had passed away at Oriel House on Saturday the 22ND of October 1910 at the age of 48 years. The memorial also contains the name of Hugh’s London born [Herne Hill] father, Christopher Colborne Graham, who had died at his home in Oriel Crescent on Monday the 22ND of November 1943 at the age of eighty six years.
Three days after the death of Lieutenant Graham the British had launched their so-called ‘Third Step’ offensive, the capture of piles of rubble, which had once been the village of Broodseinde. Taking centre stage in this part of the Flanders operation had been Second Army’s First, and Second Anzac Corps, assisted by Eighteenth Corps from Fifth Army, whilst operations on the flanks had been carried out by 14TH Corps in the north, and Tenth Corps in the south.
The major concern of the British High Command had inevitably been the unsettled weather. Forecasters had predicted strong winds and showers of rain fort the fourth, and by the evening of the third their predictions had come to fruition… ‘The sunset had been stormy, and in the late evening a strong gale rose from the south west, bringing showers of rain…heralding the arrival of the second turning point of the campaign, really bad weather’. Despite the poor forecast the operation had begun following a ‘rather feeble’ preliminary bombardment of the enemy’s positons, which had done little more than turn the already badly torn ground into a bog, at 6am on Thursday the fourth of October. [2]
Three divisions of Australian infantry [plus the New Zealand Division], roughly 54,000 officers and men, had begun their approach to the front line at dusk on the previous day. It had, inevitably, been raining as the long line of troops had passed under the Menin Gate at Ypres, this had however not dampened the feeling amongst the men, well accustomed to the shortcomings of British Generals, that that time the ‘bloody red tabs’ had got the game in hand, and if conditions had remained favourable they were on the verge of a victory which would have an effect on the whole outcome of the war. Despite the poor conditions of the approach march, which for the most part, had been over greasy duckboard tracks, the men who had laughed and joked and smoked cigarettes as they had made their way into battle. By 4am on the fourth the men of 1ST Anzac had lay crowded on the wet ground behind the ‘jumping off tapes’ on ‘Tokio Spur’ awaiting Zero Hour.
Unknown to the Australians, across the darkness of No Man’s Land the Germans had been preparing to launch their own offensive, and at that moment thousands of shock troops belonging to the 6TH Guards Division had been clustered in shell holes awaiting the arrival of their artillery bombardment which would lead them into the British positions near Zonnebeke.
The night and early hours of the fourth had passed away in total silence until shortly before dawn, by which time….’It was lowering and drizzly, and the German flares looked dull and glazed like fish eyes…It was so overcast and drizzly that we could not see [the way]. At about 5-20…a yellow flare went up on the Broodsiende Ridge, instead of a white [as heretofore] it was followed by a couple of more, and then sheaf’s of them; then others to left and right, spread gradually. About seven minutes later, or less, the German barrage began to come down battery by battery.
By 5-30 it was really heavy—crump, crump, crump, crump, crump,--like empty biscuit tins banging down into the valley ahead and on to the Glencourse Heights. Of course we thought the attack had been discovered. It made one anxious to hear it, but we had heard the same at Bullecourt [April-May 1917] twenty minutes before the attack, when one had learnt that our men can attack even after such a barrage…Then [at 6am] our barrage opened—tremendous’…[3]
The worst hit had been the Australian First Division, which had suffered over two thousand casualties in forty minutes. Less severely hit had been the adjoining Second Division [both belonging to 1ST ANZAC Corps], which had incurred a little over one thousand casualties, including amongst the missing had been twenty officers who had never been found again [the day after the bombardment it is said that groups of dead Australians had been found lying in their platoon positions as if sleeping].
Despite losing about a seventh of the attacking force the operation had gone ahead as planned, and with the casual manner that had marked the Australian soldier in every battle the diggers had lit cigarettes and moved forward and upwards towards their objectives.
On the left of the assault had been the First Australian Division. Its first objective, a row of pillboxes which had constituted the so called ‘Flanders 1’, or ‘Red Line’, had lay about eight hundred yards away on a natural terrace just below the crest of Broodseinde Ridge. Their second target had been the ‘Blue Line’, which had been on the far side slope of the ridge, four hundred yards beyond the first objective.
Before the men of First Division had crossed No Man’s Land they had seen in the dim light, and close ahead, lines of men rising up from the hundreds of shell holes before them. Some of these figures had already been on the move with bayonets fixed and the Australians, rightly believing the figures to be the enemy, had opened fire. Soon bitter hand-to-hand fighting had developed, the area being littered with the bodies of German infantry and their Australian counter parts, many bearing fearful bayonet inflicted injuries.
Once this initial resistance had been dealt with, Major General Walker’s 1ST Division had taken on the string of pillboxes. Some had fallen easily; others had proved to be tougher nuts to crack. One Australian officer had captured thirty one Germans single handed form one blockhouse the remainder of it’s garrison surrendering soon afterwards, bringing three machine guns with them. These instances had nevertheless proved to be rare. Units of the First [New South Wales] Brigade had found a number of pillboxes in marshy ground near to Molensaarelsthoek, and had lost many men before the position could be out flanked and overpowered. Heavy machine gun fire coming from ‘Retaliation Farm’ and a large crater, which had inflicted terrible casualties on the 6TH and 7TH Battalions from the 2ND Brigade, before it’s garrison had been ‘bombed out by the 6TH Battalion.
Despite heavy fighting both Brigades had reached the 1ST Division’s first objective by about 7-15am, where the Division’s order had been for the formation to make a halt for half an hour. However, flushed with victory, many of its leading companies had continued to chase their routed enemy over the crest of Broodseinde Ridge towards their second objective where they had come under fire from a position known as ‘Keiberg’ some distance away. Despite this fire First Australian had reached the ‘Blue Line’ by midday, and although the Germans had been seen massing as if for an attack, no counter attacks had been made, artillery fire having driven the enemy off.
In the centre of the assault had been General Smyth’s Second Australian Division which, like the First Division had attacked with two Brigades of infantry
[6TH and 7TH]. This formation had also encountered enemy troops in No Man’s Land and had dealt with them as swiftly as their partners had.
Chasing retreating Germans, the men of 6TH Brigade had skirted Zonnebeke Lake, and had helped with the capture of the village itself, on the way having captured four anti tank guns. Without stopping at the first objective the Brigade had continued its assault, which had finally ended amongst the rubble of Broodsiende.
The 7TH Brigade, attacking with only one battalion, the 26TH [Queensland and Tasmania], after clearing the ruins of Zonnebeke ‘in a most skilful and rapid manner’ had met withering machine gun fire coming from ‘Daisy Wood, as they had topped the crest of Broodseinde Ridge. It had been there that Lieutenant McDonnell had been killed with a bullet through the heart and the advance had been temporarily checked. Captain Smith had then taken charge and the battalion had continued to move towards the wood, whereupon the men had been assailed by more heavy fire, this time coming from a number of nearby ragged hedgerows and demolished houses. This fire had caused so many casualties that the battalion’s line had been driven back to shelter in an old trench some two hundred yards short of their final objective.
After careful reconnaissance by the battalion’s surviving officers it had been decided to that the old trench system had given a much better view and command than could have been obtained from the original objective on the edge of ‘Daisy Wood’, therefore it had been there where the battalion’s advance had finally ended. Soon the Australians had been digging into their new position. Dating from the winter of 1914-15 the old trench works had been part of the old British front line of that period, whilst the Australians had been digging they had come across scraps of khaki uniforms, in all probability belonging to British soldiers who had died there.
During the bombardment and the subsequent day’s fighting the First Division had suffered 2, 448 casualties, the Second Division 2,174. The 26TH [Queensland and Tasmania] Battalion had lost nine officers and a further three hundred and eleven ‘other ranks’ killed, wounded, or missing on the fourth of October. Amongst the missing had been nineteen years old; 6067 Private William Ernest Foster.
Born in Scarborough on the 13TH of March 1898, at No.36 St Johns Road, William had been the youngest son of Elizabeth and Thomas Foster, who had been employed by local builder William Thomas Petch [Belle Vue Street], as a ‘book keeper’ at the time that his son had been born. [4]
Educated in Miss Julia Pritchard’s Infant Department, and eventually Mr William Drummond’s Junior department of Gladstone Road Board School, at the age of twelve William had been fortunate to be sent to Scarborough’s Municipal School during 1910 [by which time the family had been residing at No.33 Nelson Street] for further education, he had remained at the school until 1912, when Tom Foster had taken his family to Australia, where the family had lived in Queensland at Howard Street, Morningside, Brisbane.
A clerk in employed in the city of Brisbane by the outbreak of war, Foster had been under age for military service during 1914 and had eventually enlisted into the A.I.F. at Victoria Barracks, Brisbane on the 11THof September 1916. By then aged eighteen years and six months, Foster had stood at five feet nine and a half inches in height, and had weighed a hundred and thirty five pounds. His medical record also shows that he had also possessed grey eyes, dark brown hair, and a ‘medium’ complexion. [5]
Initially posted to the 11TH Depot Battalion for equipping and training, Foster had remained in Victoria Barracks until mid October 1916 when he had been considered fit enough for service in an active unit. Posted to the 17TH Reinforcement Battalion of the 26TH Battalion, he had shortly embarked for Foreign Service at Brisbane in the Australian Transport ‘S.S. Marathon [‘A74’] on the 27TH of October 1916.
On the 9TH of January 1917 Private Foster had disembarked at Plymouth from where he had been sent to the Australian 7TH Training Battalion, which had been based at ‘Rollestone’. After four months of training in England Foster had embarked at Folkestone on the 25TH of April 1917 for service in France. The following day he and the remainder of his draft had arrived at the Australian Divisional Base Depot at Etaples.
Foster had eventually joined the 26TH Battalion on the 5TH of May 1917, by which time the unit had been serving in the Arras Sector of Northern France where it had been immersed in the bloody fighting of the Second Battle of Bullecourt [5TH –15TH May].
Raised at Enogerra, Queensland, during April 1915 from recruits enlisted in Queensland and Tasmania, by the time that Foster had joined the 26TH Battalion it had been commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Reginald Travers D.S.O.. Veterans of the ill fated Gallipoli campaign, the Battalion had landed in France [after service in Egypt], during March 1916, and with the 28TH [Western Australia] Battalion during the following month had mounted the first trench raid to be undertaken by Australian troops on French soil. The Battalion’s first major blooding had been at Pozieres where the unit had suffered heavy casualties between 28TH of July and 7TH of August. After a short spell in Belgium the 26TH had returned to France and the Somme Sector during October 1916, where the Battalion had taken part in two assaults on enemy positions to the east of Flers, both of which had floundered to a halt in the mud and slush of the worst winter of the war.
During early 1917, the 26TH Battalion had been involved in the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, where the battalion had been involved in the attacks on the villages of Warlencourt [1-2 March], and Lagincourt on the 26TH of the month, it had been at Lagincourt that the Battalion had won the first of two Victoria Crosses, the award being posthumously awarded to Captain Percy Herbert Cherry for ‘Most conspicuous bravery, determination, and leadership’ [the battalion’s second V.C. had been awarded to Lieutenant Albert Borrella during July 1918].
Two days before Ernest Foster had joined the Battalion it had been involved in the second attempt by the Australians to breach the Hindenburg Line around the heavily fortified village of Bullecourt, especially the vicious fighting for two enemy trench systems known to the British as ‘O.G.1’ and ‘O.G. 2’. Throughout the third of May numerous futile assaults on these positions had been made by the Australian 5TH, 6TH, and finally the 7TH Brigade, which had again resulted in heavy casualties for very little gain.
The Australians had been involved in the ferocious fighting around Bullecourt throughout the remainder of May 1917 When not in the firing line Foster had been amongst the numerous working and carry parties which had been the inevitable lot of the men on the Western Front when they had not actually been taking a part in the fighting.
[Bullecourt had finally fallen into British hands on the 17TH of May, by which time the Australians had suffered over 10,000 casualties in the two battles that had taken place there [roughly 3,000 in the first, and 7,000 in the second]].
Following Bullecourt the three exhausted Divisions of Australian infantry belonging to 1ST Anzac [which had held front line positions continuously since July 1916] had been withdrawn for four months of rest, refitting, and training in rest areas in the Somme Sector before moving into Belgium and the Third Battle of Ypres.
The ‘rested’ Private Foster had missed the opening rounds of the new offensive, however, on the twentieth of September he and the remainder of the 26TH Battalion had taken part in the Battle of the Menin Road, where the 1ST and 2ND Australian Divisions had attacked side by side in the centre of eleven Divisions of the British 2ND and 5TH Armies. This had been the first time that two Australian divisions had attacked side by side.
On the whole the Australian attack had been an overwhelming success, the battalions of infantry had leapfrogged one another at particular stages in order to maintain the momentum of their attack, which had consisted of short rapid advances, briefly halted by bloody episodes of ‘pillbox storming’. But even this carefully orchestrated victory had not been achieved without a price. The two Australian divisions had suffered over five thousand casualties between them [during these operations the 26TH Battalion had lost seven officers and a hundred and twenty seven men].
Between the 29TH of September and the 1ST of October the Australians had begun to make their preparations for the attack on Broodseinde Ridge. The Second Australian Division had relieved the Third Division in its positions some eight hundred yards to the south of the remains of the Ypres to Roulers railway, from where they would commence their attack on the fourth of October.
The news of Private Foster’s death in action had been received by his mother
[registered as her son’s next of kin] on the 13TH of October 1917. The tiding had subsequently been broadcast in Scarborough in the town’s ‘Mercury’ of Friday the 26TH of October;
‘Local colonial killed - The sad news was received on Tuesday by Miss Foster, of Cloughton, that her nephew, Private W.E. Foster, Australian Forces, had been killed in the taking of Zonnebeke Ridge on October 4TH. He was the son of Mr. and Mrs. T. Foster, Brisbane, Queensland, late of Nelson Street, where they had resided before going to Australia about six years ago. Before joining up he was a clerk in Bribane. He was nineteen years of age, and the youngest of three brothers serving with the Australians, the other two being Gunner F.L. [Frank Leslie] and Sapper F.M. [Frederick Malcolm] Foster. The latter had been here on leave a short time ago. About a month ago they all three met at the front, the first time since leaving home. He was an old Municipal School boy’…
At first recorded as ‘missing in action’, a year later, as no further information about the soldier’s fate had been forthcoming, Private Foster had officially been regarded as ‘Killed in action’ on the fourth of October. Foster’s parents had never received any official information regarding how, and where William had died, nevertheless, the Australian Red Cross had made extensive enquiries regarding the missing soldier. Their findings had never been made public at the time, and it is only recently that the contents of the Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Files of the 1914-18 war have become available for public scrutiny.
A report gathered at Le Treport’s No.16 General Hospital on the 11TH of June 1918, from a Private Johann Wilhelm Heilig, also of the 26TH Battalion says;
‘He was in B Coy. 7 Platoon and was my friend. I saw him lying dead as we were going over at Ypres on the 4TH. He had been killed by a piece of shell, which had struck and entered his forehead. Stretcher-bearers told me afterwards that he had been buried. I wrote to his mother at Morningside, Brisbane, giving her full details and have received a reply from her’….
Another soldier from the 26TH Battalion, Private Frederick Nicholas Lobwein, had told the Red Cross;
‘I knew Foster personally and we came over together. He came from Morningside, Queensland. On Oct. 4TH we went over for an attack on a German position near Zonnebeke village. We reached our objective. During this attack an H.E. shell burst near Foster and a fragment struck him in the head and killed him right out. Though in the same section I was not very close to him at the time as I was doing temporary stretcher-bearer work but one of my fellow S/B’s told me he saw him lying dead. With regard to his burial I understood that the 2ND Field Ambulance attended to that and I have since heard that he was buried in Zonnebeke village. I have written to his mother giving all these particulars but when writing I was unable to give any details about the place of burial having heard of this later’…[6]
The remains of William Foster may have been buried after the battle, however, like so many casualties of ‘Third Wipers’, no identifiable remains of the soldier had ever been recovered, despite numerous post war searches of the battlefield. At the end of the war his name had been included, with those of six thousand one hundred and ninety eight other Australians, who posses ‘no known graves’ on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, which, bearing the names of over fifty three other lost casualties of the war [including eight Victoria Cross holders], had been unveiled at Ypres by Field Marshal Lord Herbert Plumer during July 19127. William Foster’s name is commemorated amongst the names commemorated on Panel 29 of the Memorial.
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial Private Foster’s name had been commemorated by Gladstone Road School [the memorial is located in the hall of the Junior School] and the Municipal School, which had eventually become the Scarborough Boy’s High School, Westwood Secondary Modern, and finally an annexe of Yorkshire Coast College. The memorial bearing William’s name is now located in Graham Comprehensive School. Foster’s name had also been commemorated on Panel 107 of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
From the thirteenth of January 1918 the Foster’s had been awarded the princely sum of one pound per fortnight Pension in recompense for their lost son. During the post war years William’s parents had also received his medal entitlement, the British War Medals, and the Victory Medal, these had been followed by a ‘Memorial Plaque’, and Scroll’. There had been nothing else.
At the end of the war William’s elder brothers, Frank Leslie, born in Scarborough during 1894, latterly a Gunner [21343] in the Australian Field Artillery, and Frederick Malcolm, born 1897, a ‘Sapper’ [7266] in the Australian Engineers, had returned safe and sound to Australia.
To the north of 1ST ANZAC, the men of 2ND ANZAC, comprising of Major General John Monash’s 3RD Australian Division and the New Zealand Division had met less fierce resistance than their counterparts further south. Advancing with a creeping barrage, which one officer had described as being ‘like a wall of flame’, on the left of the assault the 43RD [South Australia] Battalion, which had led the 11TH Brigade of 3RD Australian into action, had met heavy machine gun fire almost at once as they had begun their advance up the slope of ‘Windmill Cabaret Ridge’, which had come from a pillbox located near to the ruined Zonnebeke railway station. Despite losing many men to this fire, including the majority of the Battalion’s officers, the Forty Third had swept onwards and had soon suppressed this fire with bombs, the remaining Germans on the crest of the ridge fleeing before the arrival of the Australian bayonets.
On the left of the assault the 37TH [Victoria] Battalion of the 10TH Brigade had been heavily shelled before Zero Hour and to escape this the men of the battalion had crept forward so far that when the British barrage had opened its foremost men had been within thirty yards of a clump of pillboxes known as ‘Levi Cottages’ on the summit of Windmill Ridge [known by the Australians as ‘Hill 40’ or ‘Anzac Ridge’]. The Thirty Seventh had also been hit by intense machine gun fire coming from these blockhouses, however, these emplacements had also soon been knocked out and bypassed.
Both Brigades had continued their advance. Sweeping over the crest of Windmill ridge and into a valley, beyond which had risen the Gravenstafel Ridge, the Victorians had encountered a ‘splutter’ of machine gun fire coming from a pillbox known as ‘Israel House’. This fire had eventually been suppressed due mainly to the magnificent efforts of Lewis gunner, Lance Corporal Walter Peeler belonging the 3RD Pioneer Battalion [attached to 37TH Battalion], who had eventually been awarded with the Victoria Cross.
Despite being heavily bombed by this time, the attack had continued and the line had eventually encountered more intense machine gun fire this time from a pair of blockhouses known as ‘Alma’, and ‘Judah House’, which had marked the first objective of Third Division, these had soon been knocked out and the leading two Battalions had begun to dig in whilst the remainder of the attacking force had reorganised and passed through to the final objective.
Despite further heavy fighting, by twelve minutes past nine on the morning of the fourth of October the Third Australian Division, shortly followed by the New Zealand Division had captured all of its objectives and had established a line just below the Bellevue Spur, just half a mile further on had lain the ruined village of Passchendaele.
The Third Australian Division had suffered over one thousand eight hundred casualties during the morning’s battle, amongst the six officers and one hundred and seventy eight men reported killed, wounded, or missing by the 43RD Battalion had been thirty four years old; 2333 Private James Goodill.
Known as ‘Sam’ by his comrades, Jim Goodill had been born in Scarborough at No.22 Spring Bank, Falsgrave, on the 7TH of September 1883. The youngest of seven children of Jane Ann [formerly Davis] and labourer William Goodill [the pair had been married at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 8TH of May 1875], Jim had spent the majority of his childhood in the centre of Scarborough, the family residing for many years at No.1 Murchison Street, and by the time of the 1901 Census, 58 Prospect Road.
A pupil of Mr John Brown’s Central Board School for boys [located on the corner of Trafalgar Street West and Melrose Street] from the age of four, Jim had eventually left the institution at the end of the summer term of 1896, when at the age of thirteen he had become indentured as an apprentice to Scarborough plasterering contractor, John Turnbull, whose ‘workshop’ had been located at the time in Gladstone Lane. Goodill had remained with Mr Turnbull for four years until 1900, when he had left to enlist as a Private in the British Regular Army. Goodill had initially served for eight years with the 3RD [Prince of Wales’s Own] Dragoon Guards, initially at the Regimental Depot at Newport, Monmouthshire, and Cairo, Egypt.
At the age of twenty four years [1908] the by then ‘time expired’ Private had migrated to Australia, where he had settled in the western part of the continent in the settlement of Waroona, close to the city of Perth, there Goodill had remained for the next eight years of his life. A married man by the outbreak of war in August 1914, Jim had been employed at the time as a farmhand on ‘Oakfield Farm’ and had been living with his wife, Charlotte Helena [Nellie] and daughter ‘Little Rae’ at No.798 Balfour Street in the town of Waroona, from where, on the 1st of May 1916 he had journeyed the one hundred and thirteen or so kilometres northwards to the city of Perth to enlist into the Australian Imperial Force.
Aged thirty two years and eight months at the time of his enlistment, Jim had been recorded in his medical record as being five feet eight and a half inches in height, and having possessed a fresh complexion, brown eyes, and dark hair. The cursory medical had also revealed he had not had Scrofula, Phthisis, Syphilis, impaired constitution, defective intelligence, defects in vision, voice, or hearing, pulse, and physical development as being ‘normal’, his right fore arm being tattooed with a ‘Japanese lady’, and his left with a ‘Jug and flowers’.
Pronounced ‘fit for service overseas’, Jim Goodill had arrived at Belmont Camp on the 31ST of May 1916 where he had been kitted out in the standard Australian uniform of khaki woollen Norfolk jacket with four large pockets and oxidised black buttons, brown boots, webbing belt, along with ammunition pouches and various packs and water bottle, the whole being topped off with the immortal Australian slouch hat bearing the rising sun emblem of the A.I.F..
Initially attached to the 71ST Depot Battalion for twelve weeks of training, Jim had eventually been posted to the 4TH Reinforcement Battalion of the 43RD Battalion, which by the end of October 1916 had been deemed fit enough for active service. On the 30TH of October the unit had arrived at Freemantle, where Goodill had embarked into the troop transport ‘S.S. Port Melbourne’, ‘A16’.
On the 29TH of December 1916, following an absence of eight years, Goodill had once again set foot on English soil at Devonport. Shortly after his arrival in his native land Goodill, and the remainder of his draft, had bee transported to the Australian Imperial Force’s Depot near Folkestone, where he had been assigned to the 11TH Training Battalion before being sent ‘over the water’ to France from nearby Folkestone in the ‘S.S. Golden Eagle’ on the 25TH of February 1917.
Goodill had initially been sent to the 3RD Australian Divisional Base Depot at Etaples for training in one of the many ‘bull rings’ which had been located on the spacious beaches at in the former French resort. At Etaples until the 21ST of April 1917, the following day Private Goodill had been amongst a draft of reinforcements destined for the 43RD Battalion, which had been serving with the 3RD Australian Division in the Armetieres sector of Northern France.
Considered as the baby of the A.I.F., the 3RD Australian had not thus far taken part in any major operations on the Western Front. Having spent most of its time since its arrival in France during November 1916 engaged in trench raids in the more sheltered areas of the front, the men had often been nicknamed ‘the neutrals’ or ‘the Lark hill Lancers’ by their countrymen serving in the four more veteran Divisions. All the backbiting had ended during May 1917 when the formation had been sent northwards to Flanders where, on the 7TH of June the division’s 9th and 10th Brigades had spearheaded the assault by 2ND Anzac at the start of the Battle of Messines Ridge.
Held in reserve for the main event that day [featured in Part One; ‘Magnus Opus’], Goodill’s battalion had nonetheless done sterling service throughout the day by providing various carrying parties for the assault troops at the forefront of the assault. The operations at Messines had come to an end on the 12TH of June, during the six days of fighting the 43RD Battalion had suffered four officer and one hundred and eighteen ‘other rank’ casualties.
A veteran of the ensuing four months of the campaign in Flanders, Jim Goodill’s wife had received notification of his demise by mid October. The tidings had eventually been broadcast in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 19TH;
‘Scarborough Colonial reported killed - A comrade has written stating that Private James Goodill, of the Australian Force, has been killed in action. He is a son of Mr. William Goodill, nurseryman, Seamer Road, and has been in Australia some years before joining up. He was married and leaves a wife and a child. Two Brothers of Private Goodill are serving’…
Despite many searches of the battlefield during and after the war the remains of an Australian soldier, which could definitely be recognised as those of James Goodill, had never been found. During 1918 the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau had made numerous enquiries to find what had happened to Jim. 2263 Private Charles Stokes had told the Bureau…
’He was in 'A' Company, 1st Platoon. I saw him immediately after being killed; he had been hit in the back, apparently by a shell. We had only gone 50 yards and carried our objective. It happened at Anzac Ridge [Hill 40] on October 4TH. H e was fairish about 5 feet 10, came from Western Australia. I think he was an Englishman and married. We called him ‘Sam’…
Another soldier from the 43RD, 2135 Corporal Albert Beesley, had reported…’I saw him killed at Passchendaele. He was caught by a shell, pieces of which hit him about the left side, death being instantaneous. We were sheltering in a shell hole at the time from the barrage, which was very severe. I knew him well he came from W. Australia. I do not know place of burial, and I cannot refer to anyone for details, but the ground was held, and I feel sure he would be buried somewhere near place of casualty’…[7]
Lost forever somewhere on the battlefield at Zonnebeke, James Goodill’s name like Private Foster’s, had eventually been included on the Memorial to the Missing at Ypres. It can be located amongst the names commemorated on Panel 29 of the Memorial. In Australia Jim’s name is to be found on Panel 136 of the Australian War Memorial located at Canberra. For some unknown reason Jim Goodill’s name had never been included on Scarborough’s War Memorial until May 2002 when Scarborough Council, at the instigation of the author, had erected a separate plaque on the Oliver’s Mount Memorial bearing the lost soldier’s name.
Jim’s name is also to be found on the ‘Rood Screen’ memorial in St James’s Church, in Falsgrave, which commemorates the names of fifty three former members of the Parish who had lost their lives during the Great War. His name is also included on a memorial [which incorrectly states that he had been killed in France] in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section O, Row 4, Grave 37], which also bears the name of his Scarborough born parents Jane Ann Goodill, who had died at the age of sixty one on the 14TH of February 1913, and William Goodill, who had ‘entered the higher service’ at his home at No.44 Milton Avenue, Scarborough on the 9TH of April 1929 at the age of seventy five years. The memorial also bears the name of the Goodill’s youngest daughter Elizabeth ‘Cissie’, who had passed away at the age of 37 years on the 28TH of August 1922.
Two of Jim’s three elder brothers had also served during the Great War. The eldest [born 1877], former Scarborough postman Tom Goodill, had served as a Sapper [Private] in the Royal Engineers [regimental number 182090], whilst former bricklayer John [born 1882] had served as a Private [regimental number 788] in the Durham Light Infantry, both had survived the war. Jim’s second eldest brother, William [born 1880] had lived for many years in the family home at 44 Milton Avenue with his wife Frances and three daughters [Cissie, Frances, and Hilda Mary] until his death at the age of ninety four years on the 22ND of November 1974.
During the post war years ‘Nellie’ Goodill and her daughter had lived for a period with Jim’s father at ‘Hope Cottage’ in Scarborough’s Seamer Road, and subsequently at No.24 Shakespeare Road, Gillingham, Kent, however, by 1928 she had returned to Australia to remarry [surname James], her last known abode being recorded as Wagerup, Western Australia.
Exactly a year after the deaths of Privates Foster and Goodill the following had appeared in the ‘In Memoriam’ section of ‘The Scarborough Mercury - In loving memory of our dear brother, Private W.E. Foster, of the Australian Imperial Forces, who was killed at Zonnebeke, on October 4TH 1917—From Frank and Fred in [France].’
Goodill…’A tribute of love and pride to Private James Goodill, Australian Imperial Forces, called to higher service on October 4TH 1917…. ‘For these are they that have passed through great tribulations, and their garments are white as snow’…From his loving wife, Nellie, and daughter, little Rae, Waroona, West Australia’…
On the right or southern flank of the Australians and New Zealanders had been Tenth Corps [belonging to 2ND Army]. Consisting [north to south] of the 7TH, 21ST, and 5TH Divisions, the corps had provided flank protection for the main assault by the Anzac’s and had also, on paper, achieved all its objectives, albeit at a high price. In some areas the mud and huge tangles of German barbed wire had been so bad that the attacking troops had almost immediately become bogged down thus losing their protective creeping barrage. These forces had been subjected to intense machine gun fire from pillboxes, and an immense German artillery barrage, which in some places could hardly be distinguished from the British creeping barrage. Amongst the most badly mauled units of Tenth Corps had been the 5TH Division.
For the assault, the division [a pre war Regular Army formation], on the extreme right of the Corps operations, had employed its 13TH and 95TH Infantry Brigades. The Thirteenth, consisting of the 1ST Battalion of the Royal West Kents, and 2ND King’s Own Scottish Borderers [KOSB] had already suffered many casualties in the same bombardment which had caused so much havoc amongst the Australians nevertheless, the remnants of the formation had begun their attack on the Polderhoek Spur at Zero Hour as planned.
The two battalions had almost straightaway been decimated by the customary hail of retaliatory enemy fire, so much so that the KOSB, tasked with a frontal attack on a pile of bricks which had once been Polderhoek Chateau, having begun the assault with around six hundred officers and men, had advanced barely seven hundred bullet and shell riddled yards until the battalion had been virtually annihilated. Consisting of little more than a handful of men and pinned down on the edge of the grounds of the Chateau the KOSB could advance no further, the surviving soldiers being forced to consolidate what little ground they had gained with their picks and shovels.
Throughout the remainder of the fourth the gallant band of Borderers had beaten off no less than eight counter attacks. Totally exhausted by the night of the 5/6 of October, the ninety survivors men had been relieved that night to march the four miles behind the front to ‘Oxford House’, where the men had received a well earned hot breakfast. Amongst the Borderers killed during the operations at Polderhoek Chateau had been twenty nine years old; 20801 Private Louis Edward Normanton.
Born in Scarborough during 1888 at No56 Trafalgar Street East, Louis had been the youngest son of Ruth and Edward Normanton, a constable in Scarborough’s Police Force. Another pupil of Mr John Brown’s Central Board School for boys, Louis Normanton had remained at the school until the age of thirteen, when he had begun work as an apprentice to Mr. Frank Watson, a ‘tailor and ladies costume maker’, whose workshops had been located at No.30 Cambridge Street, and Trafalgar Street West. [7]
By the outbreak of war Normanton had been a qualified tailor and had been working in the Chorley Lane factory of Messrs. John Barran & Sons, at the time a well known and reputable Leeds based firm specialising in the mass production of suits and other clothing. Lodging some six miles from the city with elder brother Charles William [born in Scarborough during 1885], a City of Leeds Police Constable, at No.2 Albert Street in the village of Stanningley, Normanton had not been amongst the throngs of men who had enlisted during the tumultuous first months of the war, he had accepted the King’s Shilling’ in June the following year.
Opting for service in a regular battalion of the KOSB, Louis had initially been posted to the Regimental Depot at Berwick on Tweed, in Northumberland, where he had undergone three months of ‘Square bashing’ and other military training with the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion of the regiment. Subsequently allotted to the Second Battalion [a pre war Regular Army formation], Normanton had joined the unit in Flanders, ironically almost two years to the day that he would be killed there.
On garrison duty in Dublin at the out break, 2ND KOSB had been attached to the 13TH Infantry Brigade of the 5TH Division and had been amongst the first formations of the British Expeditionary Force to land on French soil on the 17TH of August 1914, and had served with the British Second Corps during the fighting at Mons and Le Cateau. Having taken part in the majority of the fighting on the Western Front since then, especially the Second Battle of Ypres where the battalion had seen severe fighting at Hill 60 during April/May 1915], by October 1915 the Battalion had consisted of few of the men who had originally arrived with the formation in 1914, Normanton had joined the Battalion with a draft of replacements in the notoriously rat infested Carnoy Sector of the Somme front, and had soon been introduced to the depravations of trench warfare on the Western Front.
A veteran of the Somme Offensive of 1916, where Normanton had experienced the terrors of High Wood [July –August] where the battalion had lost over four hundred men, and the capture of Falfemont Farm [3 September] and Morval [23 September] where the formation had again suffered heavily [over one thousand casualties] to machine gun and shell fire. Normanton had also served in the Arras Offensive of the spring of 1917, his battalion seeing much action in support of the Canadians at Vimy Ridge. However, on the second of September 1917 the 2ND KOSB had begun its move back to the north and the Ypres Sector preparatory to taking their place in the already started Third Battle of Wipers.
The Fifth Division had eventually relieved the 23RD Division in trenches near Polygon Wood during the night of the twenty seventh of September. The men of 2ND KOSB had begun to make their preparations for the assault on Polderhoek Chateau during the night of the 1ST of October when the battalion had left their billets at Berthen to march, via Bailleul and Locre, to Dickebusch, where the formation had made their final preparations for the operation. Captain Gillon tells us…’they fitted out elaborately and weightily with extra rations, bombs, tools etc., and marched across the Comines Canal and Messines Road to Bedford House…After a halt of four hours the relief of the support lines of the 70TH Infantry Brigade in the Stirling Castle area, a long mile west of Polderhoek, was accomplished a 1am on the 2ND. Here they were vigorously shelled all day, and that night relieved the 8TH York and Lancasters on a two company front in trenches that were still worse shelled’…[8]
During the rain filled night of the third of October the officers and men of 2ND KOSB, no doubt warmed slightly with a generous tot of pre battle rum had slipped silently out of their forward trenches to a taped ‘advance position’ in ‘No Man’s Land’, where they had waited for Zero Hour.
The news of Louis Normanton’s death had been included in a casualty list, which had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 26TH of October 1917;
‘Ex Policeman’s son killed - Official news has been received that Private Louis E. Normanton, youngest son of ex P.C. and Mrs. Normanton, 80 Trafalgar Road, has been killed in action. Private Normanton, who was a single man, aged 28, served his apprenticeship with Mr. F. Watson, Trafalgar Street West, but joined up from Messrs. J. Barran & Sons, Leeds, in June 1915, going into the trenches three months later. He had twice been in Hospital having suffered badly from trench foot and being sent to Scotland [?].
He was also in hospital in France with blood poisoning. H e was on leave in Scarborough about a year ago. A comrade named Webster, of Brook Street, sent home the news of Private Normanton’s death, both men being in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Webster was able to assure his friends that Private Normanton had been properly buried. News also came from a chaplain, as well as the official intelligence, which gives the date of death as October 4TH. Mrs. Normanton’s health has been impaired largely as a result of anxiety about her son’….
Despite reportedly having been ‘properly buried’, the remains of Louis Normanton had never been recovered from the battlefield at the end of the war and had therefore become another of Scarborough’s casualties with no known grave. His name like so many of his fellow townsmen had been included on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing at Zonnebeke, Western Flanders amongst the hundreds of names of missing King’s Own Scottish Borderers commemorated on Panels 62-8 of the Memorial.
During the post war years apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Louis Normanton’s name had been included on a Roll of Honour, which had commemorated fourteen former members [including Jim Goodill] of the congregation of Scarborough’s Jubilee Methodist Chapel who had ‘fallen’ during the war. The memorial had adorned a wall of the Chapel, which had been located in Aberdeen Walk [the site in 2005 is occupied by Scarborough’s ‘Job Centre’] until its demolition during the 1970’s. Alas, the whereabouts of this memorial is not known. Nevertheless, the soldier’s name can also be found on a grave marker in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section N, Row16, Grave 38/9].
[Although not commemorated on the grave marker the plot is also the final resting place of Louis’s mother Ruth Normanton, who had died at the age of seventy on the 28TH of February 1921. Born at Norton on the 3RD of May 1848, Louis’s father, Edward Normanton had joined the Scarborough Police Force on the 3RD of August 1872, however, during December 1878 he had resigned his post in order to go to Brazil with his three brothers, all employed by a Malton firm of engineers, to build gasholders in San Paulo and Santos. Following his return from Brazil Normanton had gone to York where he had found employment in his old trade of carpenter. Eventually he had returned to Scarborough where he had once again joined the Police Force, in which he had remained until his retirement on the 7TH of September 1899. Edward Normanton had subsequently passed away at his home at No.80 Trafalgar Road on Monday the 15TH of January 1934 at the age of eighty six years. Dubbed ‘Scarborough’s oldest police pensioner’ by the local press, the remains of the former policeman had been interred in the plot during the afternoon of Friday the nineteenth of January].
Exactly a year after the death of Louis, Mr and Mrs Normanton had placed an epitaph to their lost son in the ‘In Memoriam’ section of the ‘Scarborough Mercury’, it had appeared with many other dedications to fallen sons and husbands [including Privates Foster and Goodill] in the edition of Friday the fourth of October 1918;
‘In loving memory of our dear beloved son, Private Louis E. Normanton, 2ND KOSB, who was killed in action somewhere in Belgium on the 4TH of October 1917.
His fighting is done; he’s now at rest.
God takes them first who are the best.
His vacant place no one can fill.
We loved him well; we miss him still.
From his father, mother, brothers, and sisters’…
Darkness on the fourth of October had brought the battle of Broodseinde to an end.
At a cost of around twenty thousand casualties the British line had been advanced a thousand yards closer to their ultimate objective, Passchendaele Ridge. Having themselves suffered tremendous casualties, and in addition, lost around five thousand men as prisoners of war, the battle had been considered by the Germans as perhaps their ‘blackest day of the war’. Almost all of the Gheluvelt Plateau had now been secured by the British, and despite the sorry state of his exhausted and sodden troops, and the heavy rain which had begun to fall during the afternoon of the fourth, and despite the opinions of his two Army Commanders, Plumer and Gough, who, though willing to continue, but would have welcomed a closing down of the campaign, the offensive had been ordered to continue ‘at least until the Passchendaele Ridge had been taken’.
The new operation, later christened the ‘Battle of Poelcappelle’, had been launched by Second Army following another largely ineffectual artillery barrage on the 9TH of October. Spearheaded by the sorely tried 1ST and 2ND Anzac, and the British eighteenth Corps the attackers had floundered through 800 to 1,000 yards of rain swept glutinous mud towards the Passchendaele Ridge where the Australians had been so badly mauled by the customary wall of German machine gun fire in their advance that the advance had had to eventually be called off.
Elsewhere the British had encountered much the same difficulties, the poor state of the ground, a lack of effective artillery support, and unsubdued fire from hundreds of concrete pillboxes, that by the night of the ninth the attacking forces with few exceptions, had been occupying their original positions, having gained less than a mile of ground. Second Army had suffered more than nine thousand killed, wounded, and missing on the 9th of October. Amongst them had been thirty years old; 305753 Corporal George Ernest Adams.
Born in Scarborough at No.17 Sussex Street on the 30TH of April 1885, George had been the eldest son of Hannah [formally Kitching] and ‘postman’ George Lumley Adams. A former pupil of Scarborough’s Central Board School, at the age of thirteen George had gone into the grocery trade to work in the North Marine Road shop of grocer and tea dealer William Vasey. Married during 1905 to locally born Frances Hill, by the outbreak of war the couple had been residing in Leeds, where George had enlisted into the Territorial Force 1ST/8TH Battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own [West Yorkshire Regiment] at Carlton Barracks on the 4TH of October 1914.
More popularly known as the ‘Leeds Rifles’, the 1st/8th West Yorks had been stationed at York’s Fulford Barracks by the time that Adams had joined the unit during December 1914. However by March 1915, the battalion had been moved to Gainsborough in Lincolnshire prior to receiving orders to embark for France at the start of April. Attached to the 146TH Brigade of the 49TH[West Yorkshire] Division the Leeds Rifles had duly landed at Boulogne on the 15TH of April 1915, in time to take part in the Second Battle of Ypres [22ND April—25TH May]. Also a veteran of the Somme Offensive, Corporal Adams had taken numerous operations between the 1ST of July [the disastrous opening day of the offensive] and November 1916.
During the operations of the 9TH of October the Leeds Rifles, and the remainder of 146TH Brigade had gone over the top at Zero Hour [5-20am] and had barely advanced three hundred yards before being stopped by heavy enemy artillery and sniper fire. The battalion had, nonetheless, dug in round an enemy position known as ‘Kronprinz Farm’ and had tenaciously held on in that position despite coming under intense enemy fire, until the 10TH of October, by which time the Leeds Rifles had lost half of the forty or so officers that had gone into action the previous day [including its Commanding Officer; Lieutenant Colonel Robert Arthur Hudson D.S.O.] along with over three hundred other ranks that had been reported as killed, wounded, or missing.
Amongst the latter, no identifiable remains of Corporal Adams had ever been recovered from the detritus of Flanders field, and like so many of his fellow Scarborians possess ‘no known grave’. Commemorated amongst the many names of fellow missing Yorkshiremen engraved into Panels 42 to 47, and 162 of the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing located at Zonnebeke in Belgium, in Scarborough George Ernest Adams’s name is the first in the long list of over seven hundred men of Scarborough that are featured on the town’s Oliver’s Mount War Memorial. Nevertheless, George’s name is not included on any other f the town’s surviving church and school war memorials.
[Born in Scarborough during 1891, George’s younger brother, Alfred Valentine Adams, had served during the war as a gunner [Regimental Number L/1894] in the 161ST [Scarborough Pals] Battery of the Royal Filed Artillery and despite being wounded during 1916 had survived].
Despite the apparent lack of success, and his troops having barely moved from their original positions, Plumer had been pleased with the outcome of the 9TH of October, telling Haig that he had seized a good line of attack for the assault on Passchendaele village and that the operations should continue on the twelfth. Haig, certain that the Germans had been at the end of their tether, had needed little further encouragement and had ordered the attack to go ahead.
The so-called ‘First Battle of Passchendaele’ had begun on Friday the 12TH of October and had been another shambles. Haig had given the task of capturing the shattered and barbed wire shrouded village of Passchendaele to the worn out men of Second Anzac Corps, and despite appalling conditions the Anzac’s had struggled forward as best they could until they had arrived at the Bellevue Spur, one of the strongly fortified positions protecting the village, where they had walked into a veritable hail of enemy machine gun fire which in the matter of a few hours had inflicted over 3,000 casualties on the 3RD Australian Division and had torn apart the hearts of the stoutest of Australians and New Zealanders.
North of the Anzac’s, in Fifth Army’s area of operations, the British had encountered much the same tribulations as their Australian and New Zealand counterparts. Lieutenant Sir Ivor Maxe’s Eighteenth Corps had thrown the 9TH and 18TH[Eastern] Divisions into action near Poelcapelle. The men of 9TH Division, without adequate artillery cover had advanced into a swamp in which they had literally become stuck in the mud. Trapped in the morass they had soon fallen victim to the massed enemy machine guns on the ridge, so too had the reinforcements who had been sent forward to rescue them.
Closed down that same night [during which an Australian patrol had entered Passchendaele to find the village deserted], the First Battle of Passchendaele had cost the lives of the equivalent of a division of infantry [around 13,000 men] and had advanced the Allied line barely four hundred yards.
Much of the blame for the poor performances on the ninth and twelfth of October had been placed on the shoulders of the artillery for their ineffectual preliminary bombardments, and the lack of an effective creeping barrage to protect the infantry in their advance. In defence of the much-maligned artillery it must be remembered that they had faced the same impossible conditions the infantry had forced to endure. A vision of the hell that the gunners had encountered is highlighted by Wolff;
‘As for the guns themselves, it is not known to this day what proportion of the Allied light batteries got into action that morning. From what ensued one might guess no more than a third of those assigned. The main trouble was the gun roads had not been adequate. Again the mules and packhorses had scrambled aboard any part of the tracks before they were finished. And very few of the gun platforms themselves could be properly laid in position; they either sank under the mud or simply floated away on the surface…. A few of the light pieces [eighteen pounders] were supported in one makeshift way or another, but most were left up to their axles in mud while their helpless crews awaited the signal to open fire. With each shell thrown, the recoil forced them deeper, often up to their muzzles. Their barrels began pointing upwards at increasing angles. Accurate aiming was impossible, and the range of many guns was so reduced they could not reach the enemy lines So although the heavy artillery well back was able to operate as per schedule, the preparatory 18 pounder bombardment before 5.20am was exceedingly feeble as a whole’…[9]
With these conditions to contend with there is little wonder that the artillery’s contribution had, on the whole, been considered as ‘feeble’. Another foe of the artillery had been the German counter bombardment. Sited in fixed positions in the wasteland of the Flanders plain, the gunners had been in full view of the enemy’s artillery spotters up on the ridge and had been able to pin point every Allied artillery position with accuracy. Amongst the hundreds of artillerymen who had been killed or maimed during the October operations had been twenty three years old; 26465 Gunner/Signaller Frederick Hunter.
Fred is officially recorded as being born at Scarborough [during 1894], and had reputedly been the youngest son of Jane Isobel, and Thomas Hunter, who had been residing in Scarborough at No 2 Princess Terrace during 1917. A pupil of Friarage Board School from the age of four, Fred had left the school at the age of thirteen to become indentured to local plumbing, glazing, and gas fitting contractor Mr.David Maynard, whose premises had been located at No.32 Castle Road. Amongst the hundreds of Scarborough men who had ‘joined the colours’ during the summer and autumn of 1914, Hunter had enlisted into the army at Scarborough’s Court House [located in Castle Road] with elder brother Matthew at the beginning of October. [10]
Following a basic course of military and artillery training at the R.F.A.’s No.1 Depot at Newcastle upon Tyne, during January 1915 Hunter had been amongst a large draft of Kitchener’s volunteers who had been posted to Colchester, Essex, where they had joined the newly formed [September 1914] ‘B’ Battery of the 83RD Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. Without guns initially, the unit had eventually consisted of three batteries of artillery, each equipped with four of the British Army’s standard breech loading field gun, the soon to become famous eighteen pounder.
During May 1915, following more training, the twenty three officers and seven hundred and seventy two men of 83RD Brigade had been moved to a windswept Rollestone Camp on Salisbury Plain where they had joined the equally new 18TH [Eastern] Division [Commanded at the time by Major General Ivor Maxse, the Division had recruited mainly in the Home Counties and East Anglia and had been a part of Kitchener’s Second ‘New Army’].
On the twenty fourth of June 1915 the formation had been inspected by King George the Fifth, shortly afterwards the 18TH Division had received orders to proceed overseas. By the 30TH of July Hunter and the remainder of his battery had been in France, where the 18TH Division had been concentrated near to Fleselles, south of Doullens. The division had remained in this area for almost a year, during that time the various elements of the formation had conducted war training, the infantry taking turns of duty in the trenches.
All the training had ended on the first day of the Somme Offensive [July 1ST 1916] when the division had taken part in the Battle of Albert having attacked to the south and west of the village of Montauban, where, despite suffering heavy casualties, the division had achieved all their objectives. The Division’s artillery had inevitably supported their infantry, and by this stage the gunners had reached such a high standard of efficiency that they were able to fire off over thirty rounds per minute from their 18 pounders.
In action throughout the remainder of the Somme Offensive [1ST July-18TH November], the gunners of 18TH Division had supported their infantry at Bazentin Ridge, Trones Wood, Delville Wood, Thiepval Ridge, the Ancre Heights and the Scwaben Redoubt [four members of the division had been awarded with the Victoria Cross during this period].
Throughout the early months of 1917 Hunter had taken part in operations along the Ancre River. Between the 17TH and 18TH of February he had been in action at Miraumont, and on the 10TH of March had help support an attack by the Division’s 53RD Infantry Brigade on the village of Irles. These operation had been followed by a number of operation between the 14TH and 20TH of March during the so-called ‘German retreat to the Hindenburg Line’. Before moving to Flanders during late May 1917 Hunter had also taken part in the Third Battle of the Scarpe [Arras Sector] between the 3RD and 4TH of May. At the beginning of Third Wipers the 18TH Division had taken part in the Pilckem Ridge operations [31ST of July] and the assault on Westhoek [10TH August].
News of Fred Hunter’s death had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 19TH of October 1917;
‘One of three soldier brothers killed - News reached his parents on Wednesday of the death in action of Signaller Fred Hunter, R.F.A., 2 Princess Terrace. A letter dated October 12th states ‘he was killed this morning at 9am when he was at the observation station. He was hit on the head by a piece of shell, and death was instantantaneous’. Another letter mentions that two comrades were killed and two others seriously wounded by the same shell. He was buried within sound of the guns. Deceased joined the army early in October 1914, and next Christmas would have been his fourth in France Two brothers, Sapper Matthew Hunter, Royal Engineers, and Sergeant Tom Hunter, Australian forces, are also serving. Signaller Hunter was only 23 years of age, and was serving his apprenticeship with Mr.Maynard, Plumber, when war broke out’…
Officially recorded as having been killed in action on Friday the 12TH of October 1917, the remains of Gunner Frederick Hunter had been taken to the village of Vlamertinghe [located some five kilometres to the west of Ypres], where they had been interred ‘within sound of the guns’ in the village’s newly created [June 1917] ‘New Military Cemetery’, which, by the end of Third Wipers had contained the graves of over two thousand casualties. Fred’s Grave is located in Plot 9, Row F, [Grave 24] of the Cemetery.
Apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, in Scarborough, Frederick Hunter’s name is commemorated on a ‘Roll of Honour’ located in the Wesleyan Chapel in Hoxton Road, and on gravestone in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section L, Row 2, Grave 18] which also bears the names of his father, Thomas Hunter, who had died at his home at No.2 Princess Terrace on Friday the 19TH of January 1923 at the age of sixty nine years, and his mother, Jane Isobel Hunter, who had passed away at ‘Eaglehurst’ Nursing Home [28 Trinity Road] on Saturday the 8TH of June 1957 at the grand old age of ninety five. The mother of Tom, Elizabeth, Gertrude, and Norman Hunter, Jane’s funeral had taken place during the afternoon of Wednesday the 12TH of June 1957.
Despite numerous attempts by the enemy to kill them, Fred’s elder brothers had survived the war. At the out break of hostilities the eldest [born 1890] Tom, had been living at No.105 Parry Street, Perth, Western Australia, where he had been employed as a carpenter. He had enlisted into the Australian Imperial Forces on the 16TH of August 1915 [at Perth] and had subsequently served as a private [Regimental Number 2681] with the 28TH [Western Australia] Infantry Battalion at Gallipoli. Evacuated from the Peninsular during December 1915, Hunter had subsequently been transferred to the 51ST Battalion whilst serving in Egypt.
Tom had eventually arrived in France with the unit on the 12TH of June 1916 and had taken part in the unit’s first major action at Mouquet Farm during August and September [during this period the formation had suffered over 300 casualties]. A survivor of two years service on the Western Front, including the Somme Offensive, Messines Ridge, and Third Wipers, Tom Hunter, by this time promoted to Corporal, had finally departed from France at the beginning of January 1919. Soon after his arrival in Australia he had been ‘demobbed’ on the 17TH of February to return to Perth and wife Christiana. However,
By the 1930’s Tom and Christiana Hunter had been living in Scarborough at ‘Wesleyan Cottage’, Queen Street.
Born during 1892 Matthew Hunter, more popularly known as ‘Mattie’, had been a well known amateur footballer before the war having played for Scarborough’s ‘Penguins’, and Westwood Football Clubs and assisting at Scarborough Football Club. He had also been a bricklayer working for local building contractor T.B. Jowsey & Sons [Brook Street] at the out break of the war. Following enlistment with Fred during October 1914 he had served with the Royal Engineers [Regimental Number 95229] on the Western Front throughout the conflict, often with gallantry having been the recipient of two Military Medals [he had received the first during November 1918, the second after the war had ended].
A Corporal by the time he had been demobilised during 1919, Mattie had returned to Scarborough to take up his previous employment with Jowsey’s, and by the nineteen thirties had been living in the town at No11 Glenside, Northstead, with wife ‘Minnie’ [formerly Atkinson], and daughter Pamela. Fond of a hand of Whist, during the evening of Wednesday the 10TH March 1937 the forty-five years old Mattie had been playing the game at Burniston Barracks when he had fallen from his chair. All efforts to revive unconscious ‘Mattie’ Hunter had failed and a doctor had subsequently pronounced him dead at the scene.
The well-attended funeral of the much-respected unsung war hero and Scarborian had taken place during the afternoon of Saturday the 13TH of March 1937, his coffin being carried into Scarborough’s ‘New Cemetery’ [Manor Road] by former colleagues of the old Westwood F.C. [Mattie Hunter’s final resting place is located in Section V, Row 21, Grave 43 of Manor Road Cemetery, which is also the final resting place of Mattie’s wife, Minnie. Born at Scarborough during 1896 Minnie had been the daughter of Jane and Samuel Atkinson, a Tailor by trade who had lived for many years in the town in Silver Street. Minnie had died at her home in Glenside on the 3RD of January 1986 at the age of ninety years, and her younger sister Nora Atkinson, born 1899, died 1998].
The day after the death of Fred Hunter, Scarborough had lost another of it’s sons to enemy action; Second Lieutenant John Henry Raymond Salter.
Serving as an Observer with 54 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, and aged nineteen years at the time of his death, Raymond had been the youngest son of Annie Gertrude, and Charles Edward Salter, one of Scarborough’s most prominent physicians. Born in Scarborough at ‘South Cliff House’, Prince of Wales Terrace during 1899 Raymond had been a pupil of Mr Samuel Savery’s ‘Bramcote' Preparatory School, which is still situated in nearby Filey Road. A pupil of the school from 1907, Salter had left at the end of the summer term of 1912, when he had ‘gone up’ to Wellington College, which is situated at Crowthorne, in Berkshire. Opened in 1859, Wellington, considered one of the nation’s finest boarding schools, had been Salter’s home until the winter of 1916, when he had volunteered himself for officers training.
Salter had initially trained fore three months with the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment at the regiment’s depot in Beverley, however, shortly after being gazetted as a Second Lieutenant, the eighteen years old had opted for the glamour of pilot training with the Royal Flying Corps instead of the unglamorous prospects of serving as a junior officer in the mud of Flanders or France.
Salter’s service record [held at the National Archives] states he had been accepted for flight training on the fifteenth of February 1917, and had subsequently been posted to the School of Military Aeronautics at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he had trained until the 25TH of May when he had ‘passed out’ of the college and had been posted to France as a trainee Forward Observation Officer, where he had joined 48TH Squadron, which had been stationed at an aerodrome at La Bellevue. Whilst with this squadron Salter had honed his Forward Observation skills over the enemies lines in a Bristol F2b fighter. On the fifteenth of June 1917 Salter had been posted to 81Squadron, where, on the twenty sixth of the month he had received his Observer’s wings.
On the twelfth of September Raymond Salter had been transferred to ‘Blighty’, and the 45TH Training Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, which had been stationed at Gosport. Designated as an ‘assistant instructor’ Salter had remained with this Squadron until the twenty ninth of September when he had received orders to return to France. Shortly afterwards he had arrived at The Royal Flying Corps Base Depot, which had been located at St Omer. Whilst at St Omer Salter had been posted to the 54TH Squadron, which had been attached to 4TH Brigade of the 3RD Wing of the Royal Flying Corps. Salter had duly joined the 54TH Squadron at its aerodrome at Leffrinckhouke, a village located a few kilometres north of Dunkirk.
At the time of Third Wipers the Royal Flying Corps had been suffering a high casualty rate due to enemy action and the appalling weather, which, during a single day in September had killed fourteen pilots and observers, and wounded five others, in one squadron alone. Little wonder then that the life expectancy of a flier at this time had amounted to little over fourteen days, Salter had been no exception. Little is known of Salter’s fate barely two weeks after his arrival in France. Records belonging to the Royal Flying Corps merely state that at the time of his loss he had been the pilot of Sopwith Scout B 2161, which had presumably been lost ‘on the enemy side of line. No further news’… [11]
Charlie and Annie Salter had initially been informed that Raymond was missing in action; the news had been included in a casualty list, which had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 19TH of October 1917. The Salter’s had heard no more information regarding their son until the beginning of December, when Raymond’s body had been found. They had then been officially informed that he had probably been killed on Saturday the 13TH of October, the ‘Mercury’ of Friday the seventh of December had reported;
‘Officially announced as killed - News has now been received that Second Lieut. J.H. Raymond Slater, son of Dr. Salter, Prince of Wales Terrace, previously reported missing, was killed on October 13. Lieut. Salter was attached to the Royal Flying Corps and was 18 years of age’…
Further details of the death of the young flyer had appeared in a ‘Roll of Honour’, which had been featured in the ‘Hull Daily Mail’ of Tuesday the 18TH of December;
’Second Lieut. J.H. Raymond Salter, Royal Flying Corps, was killed in action in October 13TH, after having been at the front only fourteen days. He was eighteen years of age, and the second son of Dr and Mrs Salter, South Cliff House, Scarborough. He was educated at Bramcote School, Scarborough, and Wellington College, Berkshire’…
The remains of Raymond Salter had originally been interred in Grave 386 of No 18 Military Cemetery at Praatbosch, however, at the end of the war, like those of so many casualties which had been buried in small wartime cemeteries, Salter’s remains had been exhumed by the Imperial War Graves Commission who had re-interred them in the much larger Cemetery at Zonnebeke known as ‘Tyne Cot’. Located nine kilometeres north east of Ypres, Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world and is the final resting place of eleven thousand nine hundred and fifty three casualties of the Great War [of which 8,366 are unidentified], Raymond Salter’s grave is located in Section 1, AA, [Grave 22] of the cemetery.
Just seven months after the death of their youngest son the Salter’s world had again been torn apart with the news that their eldest son serving in the newly created [April 1ST 1918] Royal Air Force had also been reported as ‘missing in action’. The tidings had been reported in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 31ST of May 1918.
Dr. Salter’s son missing - Lieutenant G.C.T. Salter, M.C. Royal Air Force, son of Dr. Salter, Scarborough, is reported missing [from] May 28TH’….
Also born at South Cliff House, Prince of Wales Terrace [baptised at Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church on the 15TH of July 1897] the nineteen years old Lieutenant Geoffrey Charles Taylor Salter had been commissioned during July 1916 and had like his younger brother, initially served as a Second Lieutenant in the East Yorkshire Regiment. However, by the spring of 1917 he had been attached to the Tank Corps and had been awarded [18/6/17] with a Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ during the Arras Offensive. [12]
Salter had relinquished his rank of Lieutenant for that of Second Lieutenant in order to join the Royal Flying Corps on the 10TH of December 1917 and had been a student at the Military School of Aeronautics at Reading from the 12TH of January 1918. Salter had subsequently been transferred for tuition at the R.F.C.’s school of aerial gunnery at New Romney before being posted as a Forward Observation Officer to 20 Squadron on the 12TH of March 1918.
During March 1918, 20 Squadron had been stationed in Northern France at an aerodrome at St Marie Cappel. However, shortly after Salter’s arrival the unit had moved to Boisdinghem, a village located to the west of St Omer, from where, shortly before dawn on Tuesday the 28TH of May, Salter, acting as observer, had taken off on a routine mission over enemy lines in one of the squadron’s F.E.2D Fighter/Bombers. Also in the aircraft had been the biplane’s pilot, twenty nine years old Lieutenant Rex George Bennett, neither of whom had been seen again.
The remains of the two fliers and their aircraft had never been found. A subsequent court of enquiry had come to the conclusion that their aircraft, notoriously vulnerable from attack from behind, may have been shot down by enemy anti aircraft and had exploded upon impact with the ground, however, no one will ever know what had really happened to them. Initially reported as missing, records belonging to the Royal Air Force merely report;
’In view of the above report and the lapse of time since he [Salter] was reported missing, the death of the above named officer has been accepted for official purposes as having occurred in action on, or since, May 28.18. The date on which he became missing’… [11]
After the war the names of the two airmen had been included on the Arras Flying Services Memorial. Located in the Faubourg D’Amiens Cemetery in the city of Arras, the memorial contains the names of nearly a thousand airmen of the Royal Naval Air Service, Royal Flying Corps, and Royal Air Force who had been killed on the Western Front who possess no known graves.
In Scarborough the Salter brothers are now only commemorated on the town’s Oliver’s Mount Memorial. Perhaps once members of one of Scarborough’s many mow defunct churches their names may also have been included on a now long forgotten ‘Roll of Honour; which had once graced a wall of their church, alas, their names are not included on the few which still survive.
Geoffrey and Raymond’s father, London born [1868] Charles Edward Salter, had arrived in Scarborough sometime before 1895 and had initially practised from No.4 St Nicholas Street with Dr Frederick Dale. Soon made Honorary Medical Officer to the town’s Kingcliff Hospital [at the time located in King Street], in 1895 he had been appointed as Surgeon to Scarborough’s Hospital and Dispensary [located in Friarsway]. During 1986 he had married Annie Gertrude [Born at Scarborough during 1873], the second daughter of Elizabeth H., and fellow Surgeon, John William Taylor J.P.
From around 1901 Charlie Salter had practised from his home at South cliff House until the mid 1920’s when he and Gertie had move to ‘Moseley House’, No. 5 Westbourne Grove, where they had resided until the mid 1930’s when their names disappear from the town’s ‘Electoral Rolls’. Their names are not included in the burial records for Scarborough and district [held at Woodlands Crematorium] therefore, it can only be assumed that they had moved away from the town at this time.
[The Taylor’s eldest daughter [born 1870], Edith Emily Taylor, had been a Voluntary Aid Detachment worker at Scarborough’s Military Hospital [housed in the workhouse in Dean Road] during the war and had died from the effects of Pneumonia on Tuesday the fifth of June 1917. Edith’s remains had been buried in Manor Road Cemetery with full military honours on Friday the 8TH of June 1917].
Third Wipers had now lasted for two and a half appalling months and had cost the British Second and Fifth Armies the lives of over two hundred thousand men. On the morning of the fifteenth of October Haig had met with Plumer and his staff at Second Army headquarters at Cassel where it had been decided to halt the offensive until the arrival of better weather. Nonetheless, seven days later, on Monday the 22ND of October [in pouring rain] the French and elements of Fifth Army had launched a half hearted assault on the enemy’s line which had done little more than cause over a thousand casualties for an advance measured in yards, most of which had been retaken that night by German counter attack.
Four days later, at 5-40am on Friday the 26TH of October, the so-called ‘Second Battle of Passchendaele’ had begun. Taking part in the initial operations had been the 50TH [Northumbrian] Division. Attached to 18TH Corps of 5TH Army this formation had been tasked with an assault on a group of concrete pillboxes on the Merckem Peninsular just south of the Houlthoulst Forest [by this time a forest in name only], which had been [and still is] located a little to the north east of the remains of the village of St Julien, where the formation had received its ‘baptism of fire’ two years previously during April 1915.
The division’s 149TH Brigade had launched its attack at Zero hour. Comprising of the 4TH, 5TH, and 7TH Battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers [the 6TH in support] the formation had advanced towards their objective in the face of heavy machine gun and artillery fire, and despite incurring numerous casualties had reached within eight hundred yards of their target until forced to call a halt due to the hurricane of enemy fire. The attack had eventually been called off and the attackers had retreated to their former positions near Marsouin Farm.
Amongst the many casualties incurred by 50TH Division during the day’s operations had been twenty-one years old; 755140 Bombardier Herbert Park Mason.
Attached to ‘C’ Battery of the 251ST Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery [50TH Divisional artillery] Herbert had been born in Scarborough during 1894 at No.61 Gladstone Road [the house had been built during 1886 as part of Gladstone Terrace] and had been the youngest of six children belonging to Rebecca and William Edwin Mason, a joiner/carpenter by trade. [13]
A pupil of the nearby Gladstone Road Infant School from the age of four, Bert had left the Junior Department of the School, like most children in those days, at the age of thirteen, to begin employment as an errand boy for local bookseller George William Dalton whose premises had been located at No.69 Newborough. A pre war part time gunner attached to the Scarborough based [St Johns Road Barracks] Territorial Force 2ND [North Riding] Battery of the Royal Field Artillery, Bert had been mobilised for war during August 1914 and had eventually embarked for Foreign Service during April 1915.
A veteran of the Second Battle of Ypres and over two years of service on the Western Front, news of Bert Mason’s death had been received by his parents at the beginning of November 1917. The tidings had been featured in a casualty list, which had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the ninth of November;
‘Corporal’s death after long service - Mr. and Mrs. W.E. Mason, 61 Gladstone Road, Scarborough have received the sad news of the death of Corporal H.P. Mason, R.F.A., their youngest son, aged 21 years.
He was in the Territorials and was mobilised at the outbreak of the war, going to France in April 1915, and thus seeing 30 months active service. He only had ten days leave in that time. It is a year this month since he was at home and he had been expecting to have another leave at any time. He was killed on October 27TH, and a message from one of his chums says; ‘It may be some consolation to know that he suffered no pain. A piece from a shell which exploded near him killed him instantly’. Another message says; ‘A braver and more cheerful chum we never had; ‘every man in the battery mourns for him’. Before joining up he was employed by Mr.Dalton, stationer, Newborough. His brother was recently gassed, and a brother in law died of wounds’…
The remains of Bombardier Mason had been taken behind the lines to a burial ground at Ruisseau Farm, which had been captured by the Guards Division on the eighth of October 1917, Ruisseau Farm Cemetery had subsequently been used by the numerous artillery units, which had been operating around Langemark and Poelkapelle between October and November 1917 and holds the graves of seventy nine casualties [mostly Guardsmen and Artillerymen] of the Great War. One of the smallest of the numerous pristine Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries dotting the West Belgium landscape, Burt Mason’s final resting place is located in Grave 10 of Plot C. His grave is flanked by those of 160033 Gunner Ernest Kearsley [C8], 771012 Gunner John Garrigan [C 9], and 756124 Bombardier J. Stones [C11], all of whom had been serving in the same unit as Bert, and had been killed in action that same day.
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Herbert Mason’s name is commemorated on the Gladstone Road School ‘Roll of Honour, and a grave marker in the town’s Manor road Cemetery, which also bears the name of his mother, Rebecca Mason, who had died at No.61 Gladstone Road almost two years to the day after her son, on Monday the 27TH of October 1919 at the age of fifty four years. Bert’s father, William Edwin, had eventually remarried during the mid 1930’s and had continued to live at the family home in Gladstone Road with second wife Frances Annie [formerly Busfield] until Tuesday the 27TH of January 1953, when he had passed away at the age of eighty eight years. Although not included on the Manor Road gravestone, his remains had been interred at the site following a service at St Johns Road Chapel during the afternoon of Friday the 30TH of January 1953.
Although badly gassed whilst serving on the Western Front during 1917, Bert’s elder brother [born 1891] Arthur, also a gunner [207648] in the Royal Field Artillery had survived the war. So too had Alf [born 1894], who had served as a Private [76522] in the Durham Light Infantry. Following service in the Royal Field Artillery the Mason’s second son Tommy [Thomas Sowersby Mason], had migrated to South Africa, where he had married Lorna McKennis Cowan at Pietermaritzburg on the 2ND of October 1920. It is not known whether Bert’s eldest brother John ‘Jack’ Mason [born 1887] had served during the war.
Whilst the assault on the Merckem Peninsular had been taking place the line at Marsuoin Farm, which had been located a few hundred yards south of the Houlthulst Forest, and had comprised of little more than a series of joined up shell holes, had been held by the officers and men of the Division’s 150TH Brigade. Forming a third of this unit had been the 1ST/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment.
The Fifth Battalion’s Historian [Wylly] reports very little of the unit’s actions whilst at Marsuin Farm, merely reporting… ‘Almost immediately after arrival [on the 26TH of October] Captain G.F.G. Rees and seven men were hit. On the 28TH and 29TH the casualties were more serious amounting to seventeen non commissioned officers and men killed, three officers and fifty nine other ranks wounded’… Amongst them had been; 240170 Corporal Nicholas Sheader.
Born in ‘down street’ Scarborough at No.3 Nesfield’s Yard on the 4TH of May 1894, Nick had been the fifth of nine children of Sarah Ann, and Nicholas Godfrey Sheader, a fisherman of Scarborough more popularly known as ‘Charcoal’ Sheader, who had been living at No.25 Quay Street during 1917. A pupil of Miss Elizabeth Hannah Cowling’s Friarage Infant School from the age of four, at the age of seven Nick had moved next door to the school’s Boy’s Junior Department, which had been administered by its indomitable Headmaster, Mr. John G. Brewin. [14]
A member of Scarborough’s largest and oldest fishing families, one may have assumed that Sheader had embarked on a seafaring career once he had left school, nevertheless, at the age of thirteen Sheader had left Friarage to begin employment as a ‘boot’s’ at the Pavilion Hotel, which, situated at the top of Westborough, had been one of Scarborough’s premier Commercial hostelries [Demolished amidst much controversy during February-March 1973, when Sheader had gone to the Pavilion in 1907 the hotel had been owned by Mr. R. Lamplough. The following year it had been acquired by the renowned Laughton family].
By the age of eighteen Sheader had left the hotel trade, and like many Scarborough men he had left the town to work as a labourer at the cast iron foundry at Skinningrove, North Yorkshire. Also a pre war ‘Saturday night soldier’ [regimental Number1376], Nick had enlisted into the Territorial Force’s 1ST/5TH Battalion during 1912 at the unit’s Drill Hall, situated in North Street [the site in 2005 is occupied by the so-called ‘Superstore’ ‘TK Max’. For many years previously by the Y.M.C.A.], and had been amongst the men who had been enjoying their annual training at Deganwy Camp, in Wales, during the summer of 1914, when the unit had been hastily brought back to Scarborough as the clouds of war had begun to break over Europe. Soon after their arrival in the town, in the early hours of the fourth of August Britain had officially declared war on Germany, the battalion consequently being mobilised for the coming conflict.
During training in the north of England Sheader’s battalion had received orders to proceed to the front on the fifteenth of April 1915. Two days later the unit had disembarked from their Transport, the S.S. Onward, at Boulogne. By the twenty third of April the Fifth Battalion had been in Flanders, where that same day, the formation had received orders ‘to move up nearer to the front’. Over the ensuing six days of combat the battalion had suffered over a hundred and thirty casualties in the action which had been named the Second Battle of Ypres, a part of which had been the Battle of St Julien, where the previously untried in battle Fifth Battalion had fought so well that they received the nickname of the ‘Yorkshire Ghurkhas’.
Fortunate to come out of Second Wipers unscathed, throughout the ensuing Summer of 1915 Sheader and his surviving comrades had taken their turn in trenches at Sanctuary Wood, to the west of Ypres. However, at the beginning of July the Battalion had been afforded a rest, having marched away from the front to billets at Pont-de Nieppe, a village located close to the French town of Armentieres. From here Nick had written a graphic description of his war for Mr John Brewin, his former headmaster at Friarage Board School;
’I suppose you know that a great number of our battalion are old scholars of Friarage School. This alone should show that the teachers taught us what patriotism really is. I hope there is the same influence exercised on the boys now attending my old school. Little did we expect to be fighting in the greatest war the world has ever known….Where we are now is about five minutes walk from the enemy’s trenches, so you see we have to be very cute as they are up to all sorts of tricks…At present we are having a rest behind the lines but sleep in the open under cover of our waterproof sheets rigged up like wigwams. The country looks at its best where we are at present, and there is only the sound of the guns to remind us of the war, what a change we shall see in a few days time if we go into the trenches again, all the farms are in ruins, fields and roads holed with shells, and the bodies of men and horses are common sights. When in the trenches we take our turn watching and firing when we get a target, and at night time we send out digging parties to repair trenches, [barbed wire] entanglements, etc., which are broken by shellfire; also ration parties to draw the food, which is generally dumped a mile or more behind the line by the transport each night’…
Sheader’s letter had eventually appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the sixteenth of July 1915, under the banner; ‘Friarage at the front’. Shortly after this letter had appeared in the newspaper, Sheader returned to the front line to the east of the village Houplines, where at the end of the month he had been amongst a number of men, including Lieutenant Woodcock, who had been wounded by shellfire.
Injured in a shoulder by a fragment of shrapnel, Sheader’s wounds on that occasion had unfortunately not been considered serious enough to warrant evacuation to ‘Blighty’, and following treatment at the Battalion’s Aid Post, administered the unit’s Medical Officer [Captain Edward Oscar Libbey, Royal Army Medical Corps], he had been returned to ‘light duty’ at Battalion Headquarters.
Nick Sheader had remained in Northern France until mid December 1915, when the 5TH Battalion had received orders to return to the dreaded Sanctuary Wood Sector of the Ypres Salient, where during early February 1916 he had been amongst over thirty casualties sustained by the battalion during operations to capture ‘The Bluff’, an important enemy observation point in the southern extremities of the Salient. On that occasion he had been amongst a number of ‘Yorkshire Ghurkhas’ who had been lucky enough to receive a ‘Blighty Wound’, which had been considered serious enough to be evacuated to Bath Military Hospital, in Somerset, for treatment before being sent home for a period of convalescence leave.
Sheader had returned to the front in June 1916, when he had been promoted to Corporal. On the fifteen of September the Fifth Battalion had taken a part in the Somme Offensive when the unit had launched an attack on enemy trenches between High Wood and the village of Martinpuich, the assault, although successful, had cost the unit over two hundred and fifty casualties including Corporal Sheader. Sent for treatment at a Base Hospital at Boulogne, Sheader had eventually been returned to the front where he had spent the remainder of the autumn and terrible winter of 1916.
At the beginning of 1917 the Fifth Battalion had been in rotting trenches at Mametz Wood, in the Somme Sector. However, by April the unit had been moved to the Arras Sector where they had taken part in the Second Battle of the Scarpe [23RD and 24TH of April], where once again the unit had sustained heavy casualties [almost 200 killed, wounded, and missing].
Nick’s battalion had remained at Arras throughout the summer and autumn of 1917. During mid September Sheader had laboured in working parties that the battalion had provided for various Royal Engineer Tunnelling Companies and had spent much of his time burrowing into the Hindenburg Line near to the virtually destroyed town of Neuville Vitasse. Whilst in that area the Fifth Battalion had been subjected to a heavy assault by gas shells which had disabled some twenty men from the unit. A few days later the Battalion had begun to make their way northwards towards the fighting in Flanders.
On the fifth of October Sheader and the remainder of the battalion had begun a route march through the French countryside to the village of Boisleux-au-Mont, and onwards to Achiet-le Petit, and finally Miraumont, where the men had boarded trains which had taken them to Cassel, where they had spent a few peaceful days prior to moving, by way of Broxelle, Doornaert, Wormhoudt, and Provins, into the Elverdinghe Sector and the shell swept trenches at Marsuin Farm.
Nick’s parents had initially been told that their son was missing in action, however, by the beginning of November they had been informed that he had been killed in action on Sunday the 28TH of October 1917. The news of Nick’s death had appeared in a lengthy casualty list, which had been included in the Scarborough Mercury of Friday the 9th of November;
‘Five times wounded now reported killed - Mr. and Mrs. N. Sheader, 25 Quay Street, have received news that their son Corporal Nicholas Godfrey Sheader, Yorkshire Regiment, has been killed in action. He was 24 years of age, a single man, and he had been no less than five times previously wounded. A Territorial, he was mobilised at the outset of the war, and went to France with the 5TH Yorkshires in April 1915. Three brothers are serving on Minesweepers, and a brother-in-law, Bombardier Joseph Gosling [Royal Field Artillery], 7, Porritt’s Lane, Quay Street, was recently seriously wounded. Corporal N.G. Sheader formerly worked as a boots at hotels, including the Pavilion Hotel, at Scarborough, and before being called up to the colours he worked at Skinningrove. On hearing the news the news his mother intimated she had had a presentment that he had been killed’…
Probably blown to pieces by an exploding shell, no identifiable remains of Corporal Sheader had ever been found.
A former member of the congregation of the old town’s St Thomas’s Church [often referred to as ‘the Fishermen’s Church’] Nicholas Sheader’s name had been included on the church ‘Roll of Honour’ which had been presented by Mr and Mrs H. Wright ‘as a token of thanksgiving to almighty God’, which had commemorated the names of sixty two members of St Thomas’s who had lost their lives during the war [his name is also commemorated amongst twenty four other names on a smaller memorial which no one knows where it had belonged]. The St Thomas’s memorial is now located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church, alongside St Mary’s Roll of Honour.
Washed overboard whilst ‘gravelling’ at Cayton Bay, and forced to take to the small boat of the Scarborough registered [S.H.72] trawler ‘Dalhousie’, [skippered by Harry Eade], when she had been captured, and eventually sunk, along with the trawler ‘Florence’ [Walt Crawford] by a German submarine off Robin Hood’s Bay on Thursday the 13TH of July1916, Nick’s father, ‘Charcoal’ Sheader [born at Scarborough 25TH September 1861], had been considered one of the ‘bottom end’s’ more colourful characters.
‘Charcoal’ had for many years been a member of Scarborough’s Lifeboat crew, and had been the holder of several certificates for the saving of lives [a photograph of Charcoal Sheader had been included in the Scarborough Pictorial of the 28TH of October 1914 having recently received a certificate from Scarborough’s Mayor for the rescue of a child from Scarborough harbour], all of which had contributed to the large turnout of Scarborough’s fishing and lifeboat fraternity for the funeral of the old seadog, who had died ‘after a long period of suffering’ at his home at No.17 Tollergate Dwellings at the age of seventy five on Wednesday the 18TH of December 1935. Charcoal’s funeral had taken place on Tuesday the 24TH of December, his coffin being borne into Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery by members of Scarborough’s lifeboat crew and local fishermen.
Following the death of her husband, Sarah Ann Sheader [born in the village of Hutton Buscel during 1862] had lived for a number of years at No1 Seamen’s Dwellings, located in Longwestgate, where she had died on Tuesday the 22ND of August 1944 at the age of eighty two years. Following a short service at the nearby Ebenezer Baptist Chapel on Saturday the 26TH, Sarah’s remains had been conveyed to Manor Road Cemetery, where they had been interred with those of her husband [Nicholas Godfrey and Sarah Sheader’s final resting place is located in Section L, Row14, Grave34, of Manor Road Cemetery. The gravestone at the site does not bear their names. Nevertheless, the stone does carry the name of their daughter-in-law Margaret Ann, the wife of the Sheader’s second son, John Robert [born 1892], who had died at the age of thirty one on the 27TH of October 1920, five days after the death of her daughter Margaret Ann, who had passed away at the age of two days on the 22ND of October].
Corporal Sheader had not been the only veteran ‘Yorkshire Ghurkha’ to be killed on the 28TH of October. Shellfire had also claimed the life of twenty four years old; 240314 Sergeant William Albert Megginson.
Popularly known as ‘Tal’, Megginson had been born in Scarborough at No.4 North Terrace Gardens, Queen Street, during 1893, and had been the only son of Jane Ann and Matthew Megginson, a Scarborough cab driver.
Fatherless from the age of six, by the turn of the century Albert had been living with his mother and sister Emily [born 1892] at No.79Longwestgate, with stepfather John Storey, a labourer, who had been working for Scarborough Council. Another pupil of Friarage Board School, Megginson had also left the school at the age of thirteen to work as an errand boy for local grocer and provisioner W.C. Land & Co., at the company’s shop located at No.24 Huntriss Row, However, by the outbreak of war he had been employed as a waiter at the London Inn Café, located at No.2 Newborough. [15]
Also a pre war ‘Saturday Night’ soldier in the Fifth Battalion, Megginson’s military career had ran along the same lines as Corporal Sheader [his Regimental Number1695 suggests he had enlisted after Sheader], except by the end of the Somme Offensive in November 1916, he had been promoted to Sergeant and decorated with a Military Medal for bravery shown during the operations at High Wood and Martinpuich.
Like Corporal Sheader, Megginson had initially been reported as missing in action. The news had not appeared in the local press until the beginning of 1918, when ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the fourth of January had reported;
‘Local Military Medallist missing - Mrs. J. Storey, 79, Longwestgate, has received official notice that her son, Sergt. Albert Megginson, Yorks. Regt., has been posted as wounded and missing since 28TH October 1917. Sergt. Megginson, who has been in France for 29 months, gained the Military Medal towards the end of 1916. Sergt. Megginson, who was a Territorial before the war, was employed at the London Inn Café’….
No further news regarding the fate of Sergeant Megginson had appeared in the local press. Eventually officially recorded as killed in action on the 28TH of October, no remains of the soldier had ever been recovered from the battlefield.
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Megginson’s name can be found amongst the 156 names of former parishioners commemorated on the ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church, which also contains the name of; 3/7696 Private John Megginson.
Born at Scarborough during 1898, ‘Jack’ had been the nineteen years old son of Margaret and Stephen Megginson, who had been residing at No.83 Trafalgar Road at the time that their son had been killed in action in the Feurbaix Sector of Northern France on the 28TH of February 1915 whilst serving with ‘A’ Company of the 2ND Battalion of Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own [Yorkshire Regiment]. A former member of St Mary’s choir, and prominent local footballer, the final resting place of Private Megginson is located in Section 1, A, [Grave 18], of the Rue-David Military Cemetery, at Fleurbaix.
Twenty six years old at the time of his death, Seamer born 240174 Corporal Fred Wellburn Watson had also been a pre war member of the Battalion [original Regimental Number 1385] having served in the unit’s Machine Gun Section since 1913. Another veteran of St Julien, Fred had also been slightly wounded during the action, nevertheless, he had not been amongst those men who had been evacuated to England. Promoted to Corporal and awarded with the Military Medal following the Somme Offensive [November 1916], the news of Fred’s death had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 16TH of November 1917.
‘Military Medallist killed - Corporal F. Watson, a Scarborough man who recently won the Military Medal, was killed in action on October 28TH. He was in the Territorials when the war broke out and has been serving throughout hostilities, going to France in April 1915. He was married when on leave and his wife is now in Birmingham. Corporal Watson, who was 26, was formerly employed at Queen Margaret’s School. A letter from an officer says that Corporal Watson was killed instantly. He had been in charge of Lewis Guns and was considered very competent and courageous. A comrade sent home a photograph of Mrs. Watson, which she had sent to her husband but which did not arrive until after his death’…[16]
[A photograph of the men of the Machine Gun Section of the Fifth Battalion, including Fred Watson [then a Private], is reproduced on page 142 of Mark Marsay’s splendid ‘Baptism of fire, Part One, the war of the Yorkshire Gurkhas’].
During the day the Battalion had also lost twenty one years old; 240375 Corporal George William Wynne. George had been born in Scarborough during 1897 at No.22 Hibernia Street and had been the eldest son of Emily and John Wynne, a bricklayer by trade. George had been another pre war ‘Saturday night soldier’ in the 5TH Battalion [Regimental Number 1823], and had also worked as a porter for the North Eastern Railway Company at their station at Scarborough. News of Corporal Wynne’s loss had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 9TH of November 1917;
‘Fourth wound proves fatal - The sister of Lance Sergeant G. Wynne, Yorks. Regiment, 26 Hibernia Street, has received a letter from his commanding officer, stating that he was killed instantly by a shell on October 28TH. Lance Sergeant Wynne, who previously worked as a porter at the railway station would only have been 22 years of age this Christmas. He has been out in France for over two years and has been wounded three times before, the first occasion being when the Yorkshire troops were christened the Yorkshire Ghurkas by the Canadians’…
Corporal Wynne he had been warded with the Military Medal on the 21ST of August 1917 and had never lived long enough to receive the coveted award. News of the award had reached Scarborough two months after his death, and had been featured in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 7TH of December 1917;
‘Scarboro’ Military Medallist’s death - Our list of honours gained by local men [which had been featured in the ‘Mercury’ of Friday the 30TH of November 1917] should have included the late Lance Sergeant G.W. Wynne, 5TH Yorkshire Regiment. Writing to Mrs. Barr, 12 Regent Street, an aunt of the gallant non-com, Captain Steward, for the Colonel in Charge of No.1 Infantry Records [based at York], says; I beg to inform you that the late Lance Sergeant G.W. Wynne was awarded the Military Medal…We recently announced the death of the recipient’…
A former pupil of Gladstone Road Infant and Junior Board Schools, George William Wynne’s name had been included on the school’s War Memorial, a large brass plaque bearing the names of seventy three former pupils who had lost their lives during the war. The memorial had been unveiled by Mr. William Robert Drummond, the school’s first Headmaster, on the 14TH of December 1927 and can be found in the Hall of the Junior School.
No identifiable remains of the four veterans had ever been recovered from the detritus of the Flanders battlefield. After the war the names of Corporal’s Sheader, Watson, and Wynne, along with Sergeant Megginson’s had been included with those of a further 35,000 ‘missing’ officers and men, on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing at Zonnebeke. Their names are located on Panels 52 to 54, and 162A, which are dedicated to the Yorkshire Regiment’s missing casualties of the Great War.
Although held in reserve at the start of the Second Battle of Passchendaele, the 7TH Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment had been drawn into the battle by mid November. Attached to the 50TH Brigade of 17TH [Northern] Division, the 7TH East Yorks had arrived in Flanders, after a particularly hard period of service at Arras, at the start of November and had initially been stationed in the Langemarck Sector near the ruined village of Pilkem, where the battalion had held a ‘support position’ consisting of little more than a collection of joined up shell holes best described by Wyrall;
‘There were no trenches here, both the front and support line consisting of posts of consolidated shell holes, muddy and in an abominable condition, the mud being almost as bad as on the Somme. The only means of progress to and from these shell holes was by duck board tracks, for the whole ground was had been churned up by shellfire and so saturated with water that movement across country except by these tracks was impossible’… The East Yorkshire had to find accommodation in these shell holes and in order to provide shelter against wind and rain they were issued with tarpaulins. The spongy and muddy state of the ground made digging impossible’…[17]
The Battalion had remained in these positions until the 13TH of October, when the unit had relieved a unit of the Border Regiment to the west of Poelcappelle, and had remained in those equally gruesome positions until the 16TH October when the officers and men of the battalion had been marched to bivouacs at Boesinghe, via the 17TH Divisional Canteen, where the tired, wet, and very muddy soldiers had been plied with hot coffee, biscuits, chocolate, and cigarettes, which had all been washed down with a welcoming issue of Rum.
Out of action until November, the 7TH East Yorkshire had remained for a few days resting and training at ‘Soult Camp. However, soon the battalion had received orders to return to the front and during the night of Thursday the 15TH of November the unit had moved into the front line to endure two days and nights of hell in front of ‘Souvenir Farm’, where, by the time the unit had been relieved during the night of Saturday the 17TH of November it had had two officers and four other ranks gassed, seven men killed, forty three wounded, and four men recorded as ‘missing.
Amongst three men of the 7TH Battalion that had ‘died of wounds’ during this period had been nineteen years old; Private Wilfred Dowse Rawling.
Born at ‘Peasholme’ Throxenby during 1898, ‘Babs’ had been the youngest of nine children of Harriet and ‘bathing machine owner’ George Blackitt Rawling, who during 1917 had been residing in the town at No.10 Ashville Avenue. [18]
A pupil of Scarborough’s Central Board School, Rawling, like most children of his day, had left formal education at the age of thirteen and had worked in the family’s bathing machine business that had been located on Scarborough’s North Bay Beach.
Aged sixteen years by the time of the outbreak of war ‘Bab’s had eventually enlisted into the East Yorkshire Regiment [at Scarborough] during late 1915. Officially still underage for military service; he had been amongst thousands of youngsters that had found their way into the army during those first tentative moments of the conflict. Posted to the crowded East Yorkshire’s Regimental Depot at Beverley, Rawling had there joined the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion of the regiment and had begun his army life with the customary round of drills, inspections, and ‘physical jerks’ that has always been the lot of the army recruit.
Considered fit enough for active service by the end of 1916, Rawlings had been fortunate to miss the carnage of that year’s Somme Offensive. However, by the time he had been making preparations to embark for France the Allies had begun to make other preparations for a new offensive in the Arras Sector of France, Where ‘Bab’s, amongst a large contingent of replacements, had duly joined the depleted ranks of the 7TH [Service] Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment on the 16TH of May 1917 whilst the unit had been stationed at Famechon in the Halloy Sector of Northern France.
Formed at Beverley during September 1914 the 7TH Battalion had duly been attached to the 50TH Brigade of the 17TH [Northern] Division and had landed on French soil with this formation at the start of July 1915. Involved in many of the major operations on the Western Front since then, by the time that Rawling had joined the unit it had recently taken part in an effort to capture a strongly held enemy held trench positions known as ‘Charlie’, ‘Curly’ and ‘Cupid’, where during bitter fighting between the 12TH and 14TH of May 1917, the Battalion had lost so many of its over 900 officers and men that the unit had had to be reorganised into a single ‘Composite Company’, consisting of six officers and 210 other ranks, including stretcher bearers and signallers.
Rawlings and the remainder of his Battalion had remained in training at Famechon until the 19TH of June, when the 7TH Battalion had returned to the Arras Sector where the unit had been stationed in the front line to the north of the River Scarpe, the unit alternating between fortnightly stretches in the trenches and a week resting in billets at ‘St. Nicholas Camp’.
Whilst in the Arras Sector ‘Babs’ Rawling had gone into action for the first time at the end of July 1917, when he had taken part in a successful raid on the adjacent enemy trenches that had been mounted by the 7TH Battalion that had netted sixteen German prisoners and had reportedly killed a further seventy five enemy soldiers at a cost to the Battalion of one officer killed and two others wounded and missing, and twenty nine other ranks killed, wounded, and missing.
By August 1917 the 7TH Battalion had moved to the Gavrelle Sector, where despite a few losses to shellfire and the departure of the unit’s commanding officer [Lieutenant Colonel East-King, nothing further of interest had happened to the Battalion until orders had received the summons to take its place in the Third Battle of Ypres at the start of October 1917, and had eventually arrived at ‘Caribou Camp to the west of Elverdinghe on the ninth of the month.
During the following day Rawlings and his comrades had been marched a few miles nearer to the front line to an encampment known as ‘White Mill Camp’ where the soldiers had exchanged their packs and greatcoats for battle equipment. At around lunchtime on the 10TH of October the Battalion had received its orders to move forward to the positions where ‘Babs’ Rawlings had eventually been wounded.
Badly injured by shrapnel during the 16TH of November, Rawlings and another soldier from the Battalion, Middlesborough born Private Walter Cooper, had been taken by ambulance to 61ST Casualty Clearing Station, where, despite a valiant effort to cling to life the nineteen years old ‘Babs’ had passed away during Saturday the 17TH of November 1917.
Living in Scarborough at No.10 Ashville Avenue at the time of her son’s demise, the widowed Harriet Rawling had duly received the dreaded buff envelope containing the news of Wilfred’s death. Reported as ‘killed’ in a lengthy casualty list that had appeared in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 23RD of November 1917, Wilf’s name had also been included in that edition’s ‘Births, Deaths, and Marriages’ section;
‘Rawling—Private Wilfred D. [Babs], died of wounds at a Casualty Clearing Station [France]. Dearly loved youngest son of Mrs. And the late G.B. Rawling, aged 19 years---In the morning of his day He answered the call’…
Shortly after Wilfred’s death his remains had been interred in the cemetery that had been attached to 61ST Casualty Clearing Station. Located a few kilometres to the north west of the city of Poperinge close to the village of Krombeke, this burial ground is now known as ‘Dozinghem Military Cemetery’, and contains the graves of over three thousand British and Commonwealth casualties of the Great War [along with 65 German burials of the First World War and 73 from World War Two]. ‘Babs’ Rawling’s final resting place is located in Section 12, Row B, Grave 6, close to that of thirty five years old fellow 7TH East Yorkshireman; 19446 Private Walter Cooper, who had died from the effects of his wounds during the 16TH of November 1917. The brother of Caroline Adamson, of 56 Middle Oxford Street, South Bank, Middlesborough, Walter’s remains are interred in Section 12, Row B, Grave 22.
Commemorated on Scarborough’s Oliver’s Mount Memorial, elsewhere in the town Wilfred Rawling’s name is perpetuated on an impressive monument in the town’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section J, Row 4, Grave 20] which also bear the name of his father; George Blackett Rawling. Born in Scarborough during 1853 George had been the eldest son of entrepraneur Simpson and Sarah [formally Blackett] Rawling and had initially worked in the town as a ‘surveyor’. However, with brother Simpson Rawling [born Scarborough 1862] he is best remembered as the proprietor of a large collection of bathing machines that had been stationed for many years on Scarborough’s North Bay Beach [Simpson Rawling had operated similar bathing machines on Scarborough’s more popular South Bay Beach]. Aged sixty-three years at the time of his death, George had passed peacefully away in Scarborough shortly after Wilfred had enlisted into the army, during Sunday the 26TH of May 1916. [19]
The memorial also bear the name of Wilf’s beloved mother; Born at Louth in the county of Lincolnshire during 1859, Harriet Dowse had been the daughter of William and Elizabeth Dowse, and had married George Rawling in Lincolnshire during 1886 and had eventually lived in Scarborough at No.10 Ashville Avenue for many years after the death of her husband and son, and had died at this house during Tuesday the 12TH of March 1940 at the age of eighty-one years. Harriet’s funeral had taken place four days later, during the morning of Saturday the 16TH of March shortly after a service of remembrance that had taken place in the nearby St. Columba’s Church
[Although the Rawling’s had been members of this church for many years, the former ‘tin tabernacle’s war memorial for some reason does not contain the name of Wilfred Dowse Rawling]
The memorial in Manor Road Cemetery also bears the inscription;
‘Re-United’…
Although involved in some of the most fearsome of operations on the Western Front during 1914 –1918 and despite being injured on numerous occasions, Wilf’s elder brothers, 2291 Corporal Sidney James [Yorkshire Regiment], 19155 Harold George [East Yorks], and 2398 Gunner Herbert William Rawling [Royal Field Artillery], had survived to return to Scarborough after the Armistice.
[1] The Green Howards in the War 1914-19 Colonel H.C. Wylly C.B. 1926. A copy of this book is to be found in the ‘Scarborough Room’ of Scarborough’s Public Library. In his text [page311] Colonel Wylly incorrectly records Graham’s name as Second Lieutenant W.G. Graham.
[2] Military Operations; France and Belgium 1917 Volume 2; Edmonds.
[3] Author unidentified; Chapter 20, P 833, The Australian Imperial Force in France; Volume 4 1917; C.E.W. Bean.
[4] At the time of the 1901 Census of Scarborough’s population the Foster family had been residing in the town at No.45 Norwood Street and had consisted of Thomas aged fifty five years, born at Cloughton, Elizabeth, forty three years, also Cloughton born. Thomas Taylor aged seventeen years, employed as an apprentice cabinet maker, born at South Shields, Arthur Louis, aged fifteen, a coach builders apprentice, also born at South Shields, Kathleen Alma, aged thirteen years, born Cloughton, Elsie May, aged ten, Edith Mary, aged nine years, Frank Lesley, aged seven, Frederick Malcolm, aged four, William Ernest, aged three, and Kate Muriel aged one year, all of whom had been born in Scarborough.
[5] The records of all the men who had served in the Australian armed forces during World War One are preserved in Australia’s National Archives at Canberra. Copies of these records are available to the general public upon request. Private Foster’s Service Record is catalogued in Series B2455; Item Number 6067.
[6] Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau Files, 1914- 18 War. [File Number 1DRL/0428] Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
[7] At the time of the 1901 Census of Scarborough the Normanton family had still been residing at No.56 Trafalgar Street East and had consisted of retired Police Constable Edward, aged fifty two years, born Norton [North Yorkshire], Ruth aged 51 years, born Thornton Le Dale, Minnie W., aged 23 years, dressmaker, Charles W., apprentice joiner, aged 16 years, Mabel A., aged 14 years, and Louis E., aged 12 years, all born at Scarborough.
[8] The K.O.S.B. in the Great War. Captain Stair Gillon; Nelson, London 1930.
Courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel G.O. Hogg, Curator of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Museum, The Barracks, Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland.
[9] Leon Wolff; In Flanders Fields; Penguin Classic Military History; 2001.
[10] Despite an extensive search by the staff at the Register Office at Harrogate has no Birth Certificate for a child born at Scarborough and named Frederick Hunter during the 1890’s. The family are also absent from the 1901 Census of Scarborough.
[11] Information contained on Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force ‘Casualty Cards, the contents of which had been courteously supplied to the author by the Research staff, and Mary Jane Millare, Officer Administrator of the Department of
Research and Information of the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon [Grahame Park Way, London NW9 5LL.
[12] The citation, which had accompanied Geoffrey Salter’s award, had been featured in the Scarborough Mercury of Friday the 22ND of June 1917 [page 6], it reads; ’He handled his tank with the greatest skill and gallantry, and although under heavy fire he cleared a trench of the enemy, which he handed over to the infantry’.
[13] At the time of the 1901 Census of Scarborough’s population the Mason family, residing at 61 Gladstone Road, had consisted of William Edwin, aged 37 years, Rebecca, aged 35 years, Elizabeth, aged 15, [employed as a printers binder], John W., aged 14, Thomas J., aged 12, Arthur E., aged 10, Alfred H., aged 7, and Herbert P., aged 4 years. All the family had been born at Scarborough.
[14] Nicholas Godfrey Sheader [Born in Scarborough, 25TH September 1861, the son of John and Susannah Sheader [formerly Godfrey] and the brother of the author’s Great Grandmother Jane Elizabeth Sheader [born at Scarborough 6th of July 1864, died in the town at ‘Ocean view’ No2 West Sandgate on the 17TH December 1918] had been married to Sarah Ann Graham at Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church on the 7TH of May 1882, they had been the parents of Lucy E., born 1882, Ellen, 1883, Jane Elizabeth, born 26TH of October 1884 in Parkin’s Lane, Richard Sanderson, born 1887, Rebecca, born 25TH December 1890, Nicholas, Amy Clarke, born 10TH November 1896 at 3 Nesfield’s Yard, Thomas Consett Pashby, born 16TH of May 1899 at 1 Bethel Place [died 17TH June 1904], and Walter, born 17TH May 1901 at No3 Bethel Place.
Many thanks to Mr. Dennis Allen for much of the above information.
[15] Matt Megginson, had died at the age of 32 years on Monday the 30TH of October 1899. Buried in Manor Road Cemetery [Section N, Row 5, Grave 11] during Friday
the 3RD of November 1899, his unmarked grave is also the final resting place of the two years old daughter of his former wife Jane Ann [Megginson], and John Storey who had died on the 8TH of July 1907 [buried on the eleventh].
[16] Once Located in Oliver’s Mount Road [now Queen Margaret’s Road], Queen Margaret’s School had originally been built during 1859 as the Princess Royal Hotel, and for a time had housed the Oliver’s Mount School for boys. However, on the 23rd of July 1901 the building had been opened by the Archbishop of York as Queen Margaret’s School for Girls [Headmistress Miss Boddy]. The authoress Winifred Holtby had been a pupil of the school when it had been slightly damaged by shrapnel on Wednesday the 16TH of December 1914 during the bombardment of Scarborough. The school had been severely damaged during the Second World War by a German aerial mine during the ‘Great Blitz’ which Scarborough had suffered during the night of March 18TH 1941. Queen Margaret’s had lain derelict for many years afterwards and had finally been demolished during the 1970’s. The site is now occupied by housing.
[17] The East Yorkshire Regiment in the Great War 1914-18; Everard Wyrall.
[18] At the time that Wilfred Rawling had been born, Scarborough’s Peasholme area had been recorded as a part of Thoxenby in the Parish of Scalby St Lawrence. Still residing in this area during the 1901 Census, by this time the Rawling family had consisted of George Blackett, 48 years of age, ‘bathing machine owner’, born Scarborough, Harriet, 42 years, born ‘South Lincolnshire’, Florence Maud, 14 years, Mabel Dowse, 12 years, Walter Simpson, 11 years, Harold George Blackett, 10 years, Edith Harriet 8 years, all these had been born in Scarborough at No10 Castle Crescent, whilst Herbert William, 7 years, Sidney James 6 years, Lilian Elizabeth, 5 years, and Wilfred Dowse, 2 years had been born at ‘Peasholme’ Throxenby.
[19] The memorial also indicates that Wilfred’s remains had been interred in ‘Proven British Cemetery in France’. However, there is no evidence to suggest Private Rawling’s body had initially been buried in the burial ground now known as ‘Proven Churchyard’, which although located in Flanders near Dozinghem Military Cemetery, only contains five British burials from the Second World War, and the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission do not record any burials being removed to other sites from this burial ground.