1918 Wrld War one in Scarborough (from the book "Neath a Foreign Sky" by Paul Allen)
In Remembrance of;
- Lance Corporal Allan Barraclough
- Deck Hand Albert Victor Brackenbury
- Corporal Thomas Crawford Bielby
Following the closing down of the ultimately disappointing operations at Cambrai, the people of the British Isle had had very little to celebrate. With feelings running high due to the disastrous outcome of a battle which had started so well, and in the end had cost over forty thousand casualties for precious little gain, the so called ‘season of goodwill’ had found few well wishers amongst a people totally sickened and fed up with a war that had had the appearance of having no end. The bad feelings circulating at this point in the conflict had been encapsulated in an article entitled ‘New Year’s Eve in Scarboro’ which had appeared in the Scarborough Mercury of Friday the fourth of January 1918.
’Since the war broke out a steady lessening has come about in the time honoured custom of letting in the New Year in Scarborough. A similar experience is no doubt the lot of the other place throughout the country. These last two year ends have witnessed an almost total collapse of the pre war observances. As a year ago, there were no bands last night to enliven the occasion, no carol singers, and indeed but the faintest echo of the scenes that used to be associated with the occasion.
By comparison the streets were deserted and there was hardly a trace of that exuberant display of animal spirits which used make Westborough and Newborough like a fair until past midnight…A few stayed out to herald the New Year, just keeping up the continuity with the past ‘till the boys come home’…
Whilst their kin folk back home in ‘Blighty’ had endured their winter of unrest in relative safety and comfort, in France and Belgium for the ordinary tommies of the severely weakened British Expeditionary Force there had been the usual business of life and death amidst the depravations of trench life on the Western Front. Seven days after the ‘New Years Eve’ article had appeared in the ‘Mercury’ the newspaper had reported the death of yet another local soldier;
‘Ex licence holder killed - The sad news has reached his wife of the death in action of Lance Corporal Alan Barraclough, Yorkshire Regiment, ‘Friar’s House’ Friar’s Entry, who only returned to France from leave as recently as three weeks ago. He formally held the licence of the Elephant and Castle [located in Cross Street], which his wife continued to hold until recently, and two children are also left. His father, the late Mr. Seth Barraclough, who died a few weeks ago, held the licence of the Dolphin Hotel for some years’…
Born during 1887 in the West Riding of Yorkshire city of Huddersfield; 28388 Lance Corporal Alan Barraclough had been the eldest son of Scarborough born Cecilia, and Seth Barraclough. The Barraclough’s had arrived in Scarborough at the turn of the century from York where Seth had been employed by the North Eastern Railway Company, as a ‘stationary engine driver. The family had initially lived in the town at No.44 Albion Street; however, by the following summer the family had been resident at the ‘Fleece Inn’, which had been located at No.11 St Thomas Street, where Seth had held the licence until 1911. The following year he had moved to the ‘Dolphin Hotel’ a well known, and still [2006] open ‘bottom end’ watering hole, located at the bottom of Eastborough, where the twenty-one years old Allan had been employed by his father as a ‘barman’. [1]
During 1913 Allan Barraclough had married Scarborough born [1890] Emily Mary Cape, the fourth daughter of and Sarah Ann, and the late [died October 1ST 1910] ‘Thomas Postill Cape, a one time ‘ship’s painter, and house decorator’. Shortly after their marriage the Barraclough’s first child, Joseph Mickman, had been born. At the outbreak of war in August 1914 the family had been residing at No 6 Vine Street. By this time Allan had been the Licensee of the Elephant and Castle, which had been located in Cross Street. However, during November 1915 he had relinquished this position shortly after the birth of his second child, Irene Mary, to enlist into the Yorkshire Regiment at Scarborough’s Court House [in those days located in Castle Road, the site in 2006 is the car park at the top of St Thomas Street].
Shortly after his enlistment Barraclough had been sent to the Yorkshire Regimental Depot located in the North Yorkshire market town of Richmond, where he had been kitted out in the standard khaki uniform of the period and introduced to the pleasures of drill, physical training and the various other aspects of military training which had been the lot of the bog standard shilling a day ‘Tommy Atkins’ of the Great War.
After a short period of training at Richmond Allan had been posted to Cannock Chase on Salisbury Plain where he had joined the 12TH[Service] Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. More commonly known as the ‘Teeside Pioneers’, the Battalion had been raised as a Pioneer Battalion during December 1914 in Middlesborough by the Mayor and Council of the city and until August 1916 had been undergoing specialised training on the outskirts of Middlesborough at Marton Hall, and at Newcastle. However, on the thirteenth of August the battalion had headed southwards led by its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel H. W. Becher, and had latterly been camped on Penkridge Bank, where the unit had been employed in the construction of four new rifle ranges.
Although given basic infantry training, the men of a pioneer battalion had been composed of a mixture of men adept with pick and shovel [such as miners and road workers] and artisans such as smiths, carpenters, joiners bricklayers, masons and tinsmiths, who had been primarily responsible for the construction of trench works and other fortifications, in addition to the repair and maintenance of the roads. One battalion of pioneers, usually consisting of around a thousand officers and men, had been allocated to each of the sixty or so divisions of infantry belonging to the British Expeditionary Force serving on the Western Front, and duly, at the end of September 1916, the Teeside Pioneers had left Cannock Chase for Aldershot, where the unit had been billeted in Badajos Barracks, where the battalion had eventually been allocated as the Pioneer Battalion to the 40TH Division.
Formed between September and December 1915 the Fortieth Division had originally been designated as a ‘Bantam’ [named after the small hardy and highly aggressive fighting cock] formation, one of two New Army Divisions [the other being the 35TH Division] which had been formed following a request to the War Office from Birkenhead’s M.P. Alfred Bigland who had instigated the formation of a battalion of infantry from under size men [less than the regulation 5 feet three inches], many of whom had previously been rejected as unsuitable for war service. Within days over three thousand men had enlisted to form two battalions of infantry, which had soon been designated as the 1ST and 2ND Birkenhead Battalions, which had shortly been integrated into the Cheshire Regiment. The idea of Bantam infantry had mushroomed, and soon other towns throughout Britain had begun to recruit undersized soldiers, these men being formed into a number of battalions of infantry, which had consequently being formed into the two Divisions.
However, by the end of 1916 the quality of the men enlisting into the Bantams had wained from the magnificent men who had joined at the outset, and as a consequence no more Bantams had been allowed to join the army, the 35TH and 40TH Divisions losing their unique identity, thus by the time that Barraclough and the remainder of the Teesside Pioneers had joined the formation had consisted of a mixture of regular and bantam sized soldiers.
Inspected by King George the Fifth at Laffan’s Plain on the 25TH of May 1916, shortly afterwards the various units of 40TH Division had begun to make preparations to proceed abroad. Having recently carried out musketry training at Pirbright, on the 27TH of May the Teeside Pioneers had received their marching orders, and on the 1stof June the battalion had embarked in the S.S. France at Southampton, destined for the customary ‘unknown destination’, which had inevitably been France and the Western Front.
Shortly after their arrival in France the Tees side Pioneer had boarded trains which had taken them to the town of Rely, where they had continued by foot to the nearby town of Fouquieres, where almost straight away the Battalion’s ‘W’ and ‘Y’ Companies had been detailed for work with the 15TH Division, whilst Barraclough’s ‘Z’ Company, commanded by Major Wilkinson, had found themselves attached to the British First Division, where, working under the instructions of the Royal Engineers, the men had been set to work in the front line trenches building shelters, clearing fields of fire and digging fire steps. The battalion had continued with this sort of work throughout the remainder of 1916, and had worked in various sectors of the front as a consequence.
By September 1917 the Teeside Pioneers had been employed in the repair of roads in the Fins area of Northern France. During the middle of the month the battalion had been subjected to a heavy gas and high explosives attack, which had resulted in the unit losing eighteen men. Badly affected by gas fumes during this bombardment Barraclough had been out of action until the end of November, by which time the 40TH Division had taken part in the abortive Cambrai Offensive. The story of the Division’s gallant efforts in the capture of Bourlon Wood has already been told [see the previous ‘Byng’s Bombshell’], and although not so actively involved as the infantry during the affair, the Teeside Pioneers had nonetheless done sterling service during the operation, having been employed in the wiring of the newly captured enemy positions and the repair of the many shell torn and vital roads in the area.
Barraclough had rejoined his battalion early in December, by which time the unit had moved to the village of St Leger, the Teeside Pioneers being employed in repairing the road between St Leger –Croisilles, and Fontaine Notre Dame. Winter had set in by this time, and their work had more often than not been hampered by severe frosts, followed by a thaw, which in turn had been followed by very wet weather. At the beginning of the New Year the Pioneers had been repairing the rain weakened parapet of the front line trenches close to St Leger, where, on Saturday the fifth of January Lance Corporal Barraclough’s life had been snuffed out almost instantly by a single sniper’s bullet.
The only fatality incurred by the Teeside Pioneers during the early part of January 1918, the remains of Alan Barraclough had been conveyed to a burial ground near to St Leger which had been used by the various fighting units and Field Ambulances located there at the time, which after the war had been named by the then Imperial [now Commonwealth] War Graves Commission as ‘St Leger British Cemetery’. This Cemetery, located down a track to the north west of the village, now contains the graves of over 150 casualties of the Great War; Alan Barraclough’s grave is located in Grave 3 of Section F.
In addition to the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, being a former member of the congregation of Scarborough’s St Peters Roman Catholic Church, Alan Barraclough’s name had been included on the church’s war memorial, a Portland stone gothic style crucifix which had originally been set on a four sided plinth of Irish limestone, which had been sculptured by a York man named George Walter Milburn [considered one of the greatest sculptors of his era, much of Milburn’s work is to be found in York Minster, he is also responsible for the statues of Queen Victoria in York Art Gallery, William Etty outside the gallery, and that of George Leeman in Station Avenue, York], which contains the names of thirty one former members of the church who had lost their lives during the First World War which had been unveiled and dedicated by Dr. Richard Lacy, the Bishop of Middlesborough during the morning of Sunday the 26TH of July 1925.
[At the end of the Second World War the names of another eleven former members of St Peters, including one female [A.T.S. Mary Sadler] had been added to the memorial which had initially been built at a cost of £400, however, during 1985 the monument had been rebuilt in black marble on its original base, at a cost of £2,400].
Alan’s name can also be found on two gravestones in Scarborough’s dean Road and Manor Road Cemeteries. The first is located in Dean Road Cemetery [Section G, Row 4, Grave 22], which also commemorates his father, Seth Barraclough, who had passed away at the age of fifty-seven at No.3 Alma Parade on Friday the 9TH of November 1917. Commemorated as ‘a flower transplanted’, the stone also bears the name of Alan’s youngest sister, York born Annie Lake Barraclough, who had died, also at No.3 Alma Parade, at the age of nineteen on the fourth of October 1920.
This memorial also includes the name of the Barraclough’s youngest son, Joseph Gregory, also born at York, who had passed away at the age of thirty-five during December 1925. Alan’s mother, Cecilia Barraclough had survived all her family and had subsequently died ‘peacefully at 3 Alma Parade on Friday the 9TH of January 1948 at the age of eighty-two years. She had been interred in the grave in Dean Road Cemetery during the morning of Tuesday the 13TH of January 1948 following a Requiem Mass, which had taken place at St Peters Church prior to the internment.
The second memorial containing Lance Corporal Barraclough’s name is located in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section W, Row 3, Grave 2], and also bears the name of Alan’s only daughter, Irene Mary. Popularly known as ‘Rene’, she had been the wife of Joshua Kramer until her death at the age of twenty-five years on Wednesday the 25TH of July 1941. For many years after her husband’s death Emily Mary Barraclough had lived with her two children Joseph Mickman and ‘Rene’, at No.33 Friargate, a house they had shared with Emily’s younger sister, Lizzie Pricilla Brackenbury [formally Cape], who had also been a ‘war widow’.
[Lizzie had been the wife of 940/DA Deck Hand Albert Victor Brackenbury, Royal Naval Reserve, who had died whilst serving in H.M.Trawler ‘Principal’, from the effects of Bronchopneumonia in the Rosyth Naval Hospital, at the age of 24 years on the 25TH of November 1918. Albert had subsequently been interred in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery; his grave is located in Section E, Row 27, Grave 33].
Lizzie Brackenbury had eventually passed away at the age of sixty-nine years on Tuesday the 3RD of April 1962, and had subsequently been buried in the grave at Manor Road following a service at the Bethel Mission, which had been located at the time in Sandside. Emily Mary had continued to live in the house in Friargate until her death exactly fifty four years to the day after that of her beloved husband, on Wednesday the fifth of January 1972, at the age of eighty two years. The remains of Emily Barraclough had been interred with those of her daughter and sister during the afternoon of Monday the 10TH of January 1972 following a service at the Bethel Mission in Sandside. The memorial to the devoted husband and wife also contains the inscription…’Re-united’.
Thirteen days after the death of Lance Corporal Barraclough, Scarborough had also lost; 241075 Corporal Thomas Crawford Bielby. A member of ‘B’ Company of the 13TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, ‘Tommy’ had been born in the town during 1892 at No.16a Castlegate, and had been the twenty six years old eldest son of Maria and John William Bielby, a bricklayer by trade, who had been living in Scarborough at No.31 Norwood Street at the time of their son’s death. [2]
A pupil of Gladstone Road Infant and Junior Schools between 1896 and 1904, at the age of twelve Bielby had left ‘Glaggo’ Road to become an errand boy for local grocer Charles Edwards, operating from his shop in Seamer Road. Still employed by Mr. Edwards at the outbreak of war, Tommy had been married to childhood sweetheart Elsie Cordiner Dutchman [the youngest daughter of May and John Henry Dutchman] at St Mary’s Parish Church on Wednesday the 24TH of March 1915, two months later he had enlisted into the Yorkshire Regiment at Scarborough’s Court House [which had been located in Castle Road, the site is now a Council car park].
Like Alan Barraclough, Tommy Bielby had begun his army career at the Yorkshire Regiment’s Regimental Depot at Richmond, where he had endured the customary three months of basic infantry training before being posted to the Territorial Force 2ND/4TH Battalion of the regiment, which at the time had been part of 189TH Brigade of the 63RD Division. A pre war ‘Saturday night’ soldier, Tommy’s already acquired military skills had soon seen him being promoted to Corporal, and had remained in various locations in England with the battalion as an instructor until the end of November 1917, when he had been placed amongst a draft of replacements which had eventually joined the veteran 13TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment.
Attached to the 121ST Brigade of 40TH Division, by the time that Bielby had joined the battalion’s ‘B’ Company, its remnants had been ‘resting’ near the village of Ervillers having recently been withdrawn from the operations at Cambrai, where the unit had almost been totally wiped out in the ferocious fighting at Boulon Wood [of the twenty four officers and four hundred and fifty other ranks who had gone into the wood on the morning of the 23RD of November 1917, barely a hundred all ranks had come out three days later].
Bielby had spent the Christmas Day of 1917 in Divisional Reserve at ‘Belfast Camp, however, two days later his battalion had returned to the front line near to Ervillers where the men had endured the first few days of the new year in conditions which are described by Wylly…’During January the weather was very inclement, alternate snow and sudden thaws rendering the communication trenches almost everywhere impassable, and reliefs had to be carried out over the top’. [3]
A soldier who had survived barely three weeks of active service, Tommy Bielby had been amongst the thousands upon thousands of men whose deaths had warranted not a mention in any of the history books. Officially recorded as having been killed in action during Friday the 18TH of January 1918, The news of Tommy’s demise had reached Elsie Bielby [who by 1918 had been residing with their one year old daughter, Elsie, at No.100 Moorland Road] on Tuesday the twenty second of January; the tiding being included in a casualty list that had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the twenty fifth:
‘Killed in action - News has come from the commanding officer that Thomas Crawford Bielby, 100 Moorland Road, was killed on January 19TH. He leaves a widow and one child. He was 26, joined up in May 1915, and had been a member of the Territorials. He went to France in December 1917, being Sergeant Instructor prior to going out. He was the son of Mr. Bielby, builder, Norwood Street, and was formerly in the employ of Mr. Edwards, Grocer, who has lost several members of his staff in the war’…
The remains of Corporal Bielby had eventually been taken some two kilometres to the east of Ervillers, where they had been interred in a burial site known as ‘Mory Abbey Military Cemetery’, which had, and still is, been located close to the village of Mory [the cemetery is to be found 450 metres north of the village on the north side of the road to Ecoust- St Mein, opposite a large farm known as L’Abbaye]. Tommy’s final resting place is to be found in Section 2, Row D, Grave 12 of the cemetery.
Amongst seventy three former pupils of Gladstone Road Council School who had lost their lives during the war of 1914-1918, Thomas Crawford Bielby’s name had been commemorated on the school’s War Memorial, which had been unveiled in the Junior Hall on the 14TH of December 1927 by Gladstone Road’s first Headmaster, Mr. William Robert Drummond. The memorial takes the form of a large brass plaque bearing the names of the lost pupils [including sisters E.W. and M.M. McLaughlin, who had died whilst on active service whilst acting as nurses with the Volunteer Aid Detachment], which can still be found in its original place in the Junior Hall of the school.
Tommy’s name can also be found on a gravestone in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section B, Row 15, Grave 34], which also bears the names of his younger sister, Sarah Jane Arnold [formerly Bielby]. More popularly known as ‘Cissie’, she had died on the 20TH of September 1924 at the age of 29 years. The memorial also commemorates his mother, Maria Bielby, who had passed away at the age of 71 years on the 5TH of June 1942, and his father, John William Bielby, who had subsequently died at his home at No.41 Beechville Avenue on Friday the 30TH of September 1949 at the age of 81 years.
The memorial also contains the name of Tommy’s younger brother John William Bielby. More popularly known as ‘Jack’, he had also served in the war, first as a Private [Regimental Number 1972] and eventually a Sergeant in the 1ST/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. A veteran of the battalion’s so called ‘Baptism of Fire’ at St Julien [April 1915] Jack had served throughout the remainder of the war with the unit until his demob during 1919.
Married at Scarborough’s St Saviours Church on the 25TH of August 1918 to Florence ‘Flo’ Clarkson [the youngest daughter of Hull confectioner J.R. Clarkson], Jack had sadly died in Scarborough at his home at No.19 West Square [probably as a result of the effects of severe gas poisoning received during the war] on Tuesday the 11TH of May 1948. Aged 55 years at the time of his death Jack had been the father of John Bielby, and had been cremated at Hull following a service at St Saviours Church, which had taken place during the morning of Friday the 14TH of May 1948.
Shortly after Tommy’s death, on Friday the first of February 1918, Elsie Bielby had commemorated her lost husband in the ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths’ column of that night’s edition of the ‘Scarborough Mercury’;
‘Thomas Crawford Bielby—dearly beloved husband of Elsie C. Bielby, 100 Moorland Road [eldest son of John W. Bielby, Norwood Street], killed in action, January 19TH 1918, aged 26 years…
He died unnoticed in the muddy trench—Nay, God was with him, and he did not flinch’…
[1] During the 1901 Census the Barraclough family had been residing at this address with Cecelia’s parents, sixty-nine years old Irish born plasterer, Joseph, and Liverpool born wife Bridget Mickman [60 years old]. The family had consisted of Seth Barraclough, sixty years old, born York [Long Moor], occupation; ‘Stationary Engine Driver’, Cecilia, 35 years, born Scarborough, Allan, 13 years, born Huddersfield, Joseph, eight years, Annie M, age one, both had been born at York.
[2] The son of Jane and bricklayer Thomas Bielby, John William Bielby had been married to Maria Crawford, a daughter of Sarah and fisherman Ben Crawford, at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 16TH of April 1891. By the time of the 1901 Census the family had been residing in Scarborough at No.35 Roscoe Street and had consisted of John W. 32 years of age, Bricklayer, Maria, 31 years, Thomas C. 9 years, John W., 8 years, Sarah Jane 6 years, Rebecca Mabel, 3 years, and Ethel Maria, aged one month. All had been born at Scarborough.
[3] The Green Howards in the War 1914-1918; Colonel H.C. Wylly. Scarborough Reference Library.
Part 2 (March –April 1918) ‘Der Kaiserschlacht’ (The Kaiser’s Battle’)
The German Offensive in the spring of 1918
In Remembrance of;
- Bombardier Thomas Harry Pottage
- Gunner John Barker
- Private John Thompson Barker
- Private Herbert Stonehouse
- Private Harold William Nundy
- Private William Herbert Goodrick
- Private Albert Davison
- Third Engineer Charles Herbert Davison
- Company Sergeant Major Percival Stabler
- Private George Frederick Stabler
- Private George Arthur Lazenby
- Private John William Lazenby
- Private john Darley Denton
By the beginning of the fourth year of an extremely bitter and costly war the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium had quite simply ran out of soldiers. Despite the introduction of conscription during 1916 fewer able bodied men had come forward and by 1918 the army had begun to see the arrival of undernourished poorly built eighteen and nineteen year olds who would never have been accepted for army service during the preceding years.
At the beginning of the year Haig had asked the British War Cabinet for 334,000 reinforcements to see him through the immediate future. However, by March he had been sent just over 174,000 troops, most of whom had been conscripts. To offset the deficiency in able-bodied troops Haig had ordered the disbandment of one hundred and fifteen battalions of infantry and the amalgamation of a further thirty-eight to form nineteen full strength units. In addition, seven more infantry battalions had been formed into pioneer battalions to offset another deficit, an acute shortage of labour.
The German Army in France and Belgium on the other hand had been augmented by thirty three divisions of first class troops, mostly grizzled veterans of the ferocious fighting on the Eastern Front who had been released to the Western Front following the collapse of the Russian and Rumanian war effort during December 1917. Despite outnumbering the British and French forces on the Western Front by 192 divisions to 156, the Germans had been well aware of the arrival in France of the first elements of the massive American army, which by the beginning of December 1917 had numbered some 130,000 troops on French soil.
Also knowing full well that the introduction of a convoy system was enabling the British to weather their U Boat campaign, the German military leaders had resolved to seek a decisive victory in the west sometime during 1918 before the Americans could make their presence felt. Accordingly, Ludendorff had begun to make plans for a last ditch campaign, which had eventually become known as the ‘Kaiserschlacht’, or ‘Imperial Battle’.
The ‘Kaiserschlacht’ operations had been formulated during a meeting between Ludendorff and the Chiefs of Staff of the Army Groups belonging to the Crown Prince Rupprecht and the German Crown Prince. One idea put forward had been for an attack to be made in Flanders, but the need to wait for the all essential dry weather, perhaps in April, had entailed an unacceptable delay. Another offensive had been considered for Verdun, Ludendorff had however, considered an attack at Verdun to be unacceptable as he thought it unlikely that the British would come to the aid of the French and he might therefore be faced with a second battle in Flanders.
Stressing that his available forces were only sufficient for one offensive only, Ludendorff had suggested an offensive to be mounted further to the south, in the Saint Quentin area of Northern France. Nothing concrete had been arranged during this meeting and over the next few weeks the Generals had mulled over their options. A further meeting between the German Generals had taken place at the end of December, once again nothing define had been arranged, nevertheless during this meeting the operations at Verdun been abandoned and preparations had been put in motion for possible offensives near the towns of Armetieres [code named ‘George’], Ypres [‘George 2], Arras [‘Mars’] and on either side of Saint Quentin [‘Michael’].
On the 21ST of January 1918 Ludendorff had finally made up his mind to undertake the ‘Michael’ operation as his main spring offensive. Over the next few weeks the detailed plans of ‘Michael’ had been drawn up, the 21ST of March being set as the start date. Ludendorff’s plan of battle had called for the Seventeenth Army, on the right wing of the operation and commanded by General Otto Von Below, along with the Second Army, under General Von Der Marwitz [both from Prince Rupprecht’s Army Group] to attack south of Arras, pinching off the salient which the British had occupied at Flesquieres, near Cambrai, since November. These two armies were then to advance towards Bapaume, and Peronne thence across the old Somme battlefield, to a line between Albert and Arras, before swinging north westwards in a gigantic left hook that would envelope Arras in the process.
On the left wing of the attack, General Oskar Von Hutier’s Eighteenth Army from Crown Prince Wilhelm’s Army Group, had been given the task of advancing beyond the River Somme and the Crozat Canal to protect the flank of the offensive, defeating any French reserves which may have been brought from the south and driving a wedge between the French and British forces. Once a significant success had been achieved south of Arras, the second phase of the operation, ‘Mars’, would be launched. In addition, planning for the ‘George’ operation had also been allowed to go ahead as an alternative operation should the Michael plan fail.
Throughout the winter of 1917-18 the Germans had begun a huge retraining programme in an effort to bring more units up to the standards set by the special assault battalions, or ‘Storm troops’. Around a quarter of the old German infantry divisions had been redesignated as ‘attack divisions’ and given the pick of new equipment including the recently introduced light sub machine guns. The remaining three quarters of the German forces, mostly containing older men had been designated as ‘trench divisions’, which would chiefly be employed with holding the line during the forthcoming battle. The spearhead of the assault would be the so-called ‘Storm troopers’. Their task would be to find the weak points in the opposing defences where they were to cause as much disruption and confusion as possible in the rear areas by deep penetration and envelopment tactics.
Probably the most important element of the initial assault would be the artillery. Carefully orchestrated fire plans had been designed around short, sharp ‘hurricane’ bombardments of immense weight and intensity, using predicted shooting. These so called ‘hurricane’ bombardments were to consist of high proportions of gas shells to neutralise, and silence enemy gunners, whilst also paying particular attention to the disruption of the enemy’s lines of communications and assembly areas far behind the front areas.
Everyone, from Tommy Atkins to Douglas Haig on the British side of the wire had known that the Germans were up to something and at some point would attack their line during the new year, the trouble was no one knew when or where. Throughout the first four months of 1918 there had been no major operations and the Western Front had settled into an unusually quiet state. On the 16TH of February Haig had met with his Army Commanders in the town of Doullens to discuss the uneasy state of affairs. The general feeling amongst the assembled officers had been that they could hold their front and Haig had thought that the attack might fall on a large front stretching from Lens to the River Oise. Another conference had been held on the 2ND of March where it had been revealed that intelligence sources had indicted the attack would be aimed at General Sir Julian Byng’s Third and Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army fronts, which had stretched southwards from Arras to the River Oise.
By the beginning of March 1918 the British defences on the Western Front had been based on the German system of 1917 involving three zones of defence known as the ‘Forward’, ‘Battle’, and ‘Rear’. The ‘Forward Zone’ had been the existing front line whilst the Battle Zone had usually been one or two miles behind the Forward Zone, 2,000 to 3,000 yards in depth and containing two thirds of the artillery. This had been the place where should the Forward Zone be overrun the enemy’s advance would be brought to a halt, using if necessary, all available reserves. The Rear Zone [sometimes known as the ‘Green Line’] had been between four and eight miles behind the Forward Zone and had been the final line of resistance should all else fail.
It had become increasingly evident that something big was in the wind. British suspicions had been further reinforced on the 8TH of March when the Germans had fired a series of test artillery barrages on positions held by the Royal Naval Division upon Flesquires Ridge, which had caused many casualties. Four days later the testing had been continued with the Germans subjecting the division’s positions to a daylong bombardment with 200,000 ‘Yellow Cross’ [mustard] gas shells. [1]
The brunt of this attack had been borne by the Hawke and Drake Battalions, which between them had lost over nine hundred and seventy officers and men between the 12TH and 21ST of March [the total number of casualties suffered, mostly due to gas, by the Royal Naval Division during this period had been over 2, 300 officers and men].
Also amongst those affected had been members of the R.N.D.’s various support units, in particular the gunners of the four attached Brigades of artillery [315TH –318TH]. Amongst the 317TH [2ND/3RD Northumbrian] Brigade’s many casualties had been twenty-two years old 761213 Bombardier Thomas Harry Pottage.
Attached to ‘C’ Battery, Tom had been born in Scarborough at No.6 Wrea Lane during 1895 [baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 17TH of October], and had been the eldest of seven children belonging to Clara and John Pottage, a well known Scarborough Cab driver, who by 1918 had been residing in the town at No.59 Seaton Terrace, Hibernia Street. [2]
A former pupil of St Mary’s Parish, and Friarage Board Schools, at the outbreak of war Tom had been working in the Gladstone Lane warehouse of local drapers, John Tonks & Sons, whose store had been located in Scarborough at 104-105 Westborough. Also a part-time gunner in the Scarborough based [St Johns Road Barracks] Territorial 2ND[Northumbrian] Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, Tom had been mobilised for war along with the remainder of Britain’s armed forces during August 1914. However, being aged only eighteen by this time Tom had been considered too young for Foreign Service and had been transferred during September 1914 to the newly formed 2ND/3RD Northumbrian Brigade of artillery, which had subsequently been attached for coastal defence duties, to the 63RD [2ND Northumbrian] Division. Pottage had remained with this unit, serving in the North East of England, until July 1916 when the division’s four artillery batteries had been transferred to the newly designated 63RD [Royal Naval] Division, which by this time had seen much bitter fighting in the Gallipoli campaign and on the Western Front.
A veteran of all of the R.N.D.’s operations since his baptism of fire during the gruesome operations on the Ancre during the winter of 1916, Pottage, and hundreds of other gas casualties, had been evacuated to the large group of allied hospitals which had been situated to the south of the city of Rouen, where he had been admitted into No 2 British Red Cross Hospital. Little is known regarding the extent of Tom’s ‘wounding’, nonetheless, the degree of suffering he may have endured can be gauged from an account written by a nurse serving in France.
’Gas cases are terrible. They cannot breathe lying down or sitting up. They just struggle for breath, but nothing can be done. Their lungs are gone—literally burnt out. Some have their eyes and faces entirely eaten away by gas and their bodies covered with first degree burns. We must try to relieve them by pouring oil on them. They cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of a propped up sheets. Gas burns must be agonising because the other cases do not complain even with the worst wounds but gas cases are invariably beyond endurance and they cannot help crying out. One boy today, screaming to die, the entire top layer of his skin burnt from face to body’…[3]
It is said that only two per cent of gas victims had died, usually as a result of secondary complications such as pneumonia, thus had been the case with Thomas Pottage, who had passed away during Tuesday the 19TH of March 1918. The news of her beloved son’s death had reached Clara Pottage by Saturday the twenty third; the tidings being featured in a casualty list that had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 28TH of March;
‘Died from gas poisoning - News was received on Saturday that Gunner Thomas Pottage R.F.A., 59, Seaton Terrace, has died on the 19TH inst. from the effects of gas. He was single and prior to joining up worked for Messrs. Tonks and Sons. His father Sergt. John Pottage, A.V.C. is serving in France’. [4]
Shortly after Pottage’s demise his remains, and those of many more dead gas casualties, had been transported to the Hospital’s burial ground known as St Sever Cemetery Extension, which is located some three kilometres to the south of Rouen. Tom’s final resting place is located in Section P 4, D, Grave 25.
A year after Tom’s death an epitaph to a fallen son had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 21ST of March 1919;
‘In loving memory of our dear lad, Corporal Thomas Pottage, R.F.A., who was killed in France March 19TH 1918.
A devoted son, a faithful brother, One of God’s best towards his mother, He bravely answered duty’s call, He did his best for one and all…From his loving mother, Dad, sisters, and brothers’…
Apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Thomas Pottage is one of a handful of World War One casualties to be commemorated in Scarborough’s Woodlands Cemetery on a grave marker in Section B, Row 10, Grave 34, which also bears the names of his Scarborough born [1866] father John Pottage. The eldest son of Tom and Esther Pottage, John had passed ‘peacefully away following a long illness’ at his homage at 31 Oak Road, at the age of seventy-five years, on Monday the 13TH of October 1941. Also included on the stone is the name of Tom’s Scarborough born mother, Clara Pottage, who had died at 31 Oak Road, on Tuesday the 17TH of January 1950 at the age of 77 years.
During the dry fine moonlit night of the twentieth of March the area immediately behind the Germans lines had come alive as over a million men along with over ten thousand guns and mortars had begun to assemble in their assault positions. The first to move had been the artillery, many of the guns having not yet been moved into their battery positions. Each gun with its already prepared stock pile of ammunition had been heaved into place in position manually by the gunners, who, following their labours had settled down to grab what sleep they could before the beginning of their bombardment at 4-20am.
For fifty miles, from the village of Cherisy down to La Fere, the German front line trenches had been crammed with storm troopers and infantrymen, trench mortar men, machine gunners, and men armed with flamethrowers. Behind the front had stood the main force of the artillery, along with the various pioneer and medical units that were to accompany the assault teams. Behind these had been the second wave units awaiting their turn to go into action in ruined villages and farms, and behind these a massive seventy-seven reserve divisions had stood in readiness.
On the British side of the wire life had gone on pretty much the same as usual depending on how seriously local commanders had viewed the situation. A number of patrol had, however, been sent out find if anything was happening. Some had come back to report having not seen or heard anything untoward, whilst others had told of finding gaps in the wire and of hearing the rumble of moving vehicles and guns. Nevertheless, two miles to the north of St Quentin a patrol from the Royal Warwick’s had been sent out on reconnaissance into the German trenches and had returned with a machine gun and around thirteen men from various German units who had freely told the assembled group of British officers that they were assault troops and had been due to take part in a large operation scheduled to begin in a few hours time, and that the artillery bombardment would begin at 0400 hours. The prisoners had also pleaded to be taken to the rear of the British lines with all speed-- please!
Despite the warnings the British had not ordered ‘Man Battle Stations’, and had done little apart from opening a desultory artillery fire on the German lines. Apart from the occasional explosion of a British artillery shell the night had remained quiet. There had of course been not a sound from the German side of the wire and many survivors would later recall the lack of flares throughout the night, which the Germans had usually made much use of. However, despite no outward signs of trouble brewing, most of the British troops had spent an uneasy night waiting for whatever the morrow would bring.
A dense fog had developed soon after midnight of the twentieth/twenty first compounding the eeriness of the night. At 3-30am on Thursday the 21ST of March 1918 British artillery had opened fire on likely enemy troop concentration areas. However, sixty minutes later, soon after 4-30am, the roar of the British guns had been engulfed by the tumultuous thunder of the largest bombardment of the war, as over six thousand enemy artillery pieces had begun to saturate the fronts of Third and Fifth Armies with gas and high explosives.
‘So intense was the bombardment that the earth around us trembled. It was a dark night, but the tongues of flame from the guns—2, 500 British guns replied to the German bombardment—lit up the night sky to daylight brightness. Mixed up with the high explosive shells crashing on our trenches, were the less noisy but deadly das shells. Trenches collapsed, infantry in front line positions, groping about in their gas masks, were stunned by the sudden terrific onslaught…Machine gun posts were blown sky high—along with human limbs. Men were coughing and vomiting from the effects of gas, and men were blinded’…[5]
The enemy bombardment had been scheduled to last for five terrible hours, and had been designed, by its sheer weight and ferocity to stun the defenders, destroy his communications and silence his artillery. The first two hours of the German artillery fire had been concentrated mainly with the saturation of the British artillery positions in the ‘Battle Zone’ with gas. This had been followed by a three-hour bombardment with a mixture of gas and high explosives on the positions in the Forward and Battle Zones, focussing on the infantry crammed into the front positions. The situation in these positions at the end of the bombardment had been one of total chaos. Underground cables had been severed causing a loss of communications between the front and the various Divisional Headquarters, and also between the front and the artillery positions. This poor state of affairs had been exacerbated by the fog, which had prevented any visual communication by S.O.S. flares, and also air observation.
At Zero Hour [9-40am] the bombardment had been replaced by a ‘creeping barrage’, which had heralded the advance of the infantry, spearheaded by stormtroopers. Equipped with sub machine guns and flamethrowers the storm troopers had found the front line garrison virtually annihilated. The survivors, blinded by the fog and forced to wear gas masks for hours on end had first become aware of the infantry assault at the point where their positions had been engulfed by the leading waves of what many would later call the ‘grey avalanche’, hordes of field grey clad German infantry. Despite the apparent hopelessness of trying to hold out in the face of such overwhelming odds some units in the front Zone had tried to make a stand but these had soon been crushed and few men had made it back into the Battle Zone.
Amongst the units, which had taken part in that dreadful first day of the German Spring Offensive, had been the 1ST Battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own [West Yorkshire Regiment]. Attached to Fourth Corps of Sir Julian Byng’s Third Army, the battalion had belonged to the 18TH Brigade of the 6TH Division which had been holding over four thousand yards of the front line near the village of Morchies.
Positioned close to the extreme left flank of the German18TH Army’s assault, the battalion, along with the remainder of 18TH Brigade [2ND Durham Light Infantry and 11TH Essex Regiment] had nonetheless put up a stiff defence of the two thousand yards long perimeter until the late afternoon of the 21ST, by which time the Brigade had virtually ceased to exist. Almost out of bombs and ammunition the surviving members of the Brigade had eventually been ordered to make a fighting retreat to Fourth Corps ‘Defence Line’, which had been to the east of Monchies. Scant records had understandably been made at battalion level that day and as a consequence very little is known of what had actually happened to the 1ST West Yorkshire’s during that momentous day.
However, it is known that at around 10am that day the Battalion’s Commanding Officer [Lieutenant Colonel A.M. Boyall] had reported that the enemy had been advancing towards his positions in ‘masses’, and by midday had sent another more urgent message asking for more small arms ammunition. Unknown to him, by this time the enemy had almost surrounded 18TH Brigade’s position and the ammunition had never been sent. At 3pm Boyall had again telephoned stating this time…’if no reinforcements were forthcoming the remains of the Brigade would fight it out to the last in the reserve line, for the situation was hopeless and retirement impossible’…[6]
For three more desperate hours the tattered brigade had held out against overwhelming odds. By 6-50 all of the formations bombs and most of the ammunition had been used up, at this point Boyall had ordered all the surviving men to make a fighting retreat to the Corps Reserve Line which had been situated to the east of Morchies. Thankfully shrouded in a thick fog the soldiers had began their fight through the enemy’s line, stating afterwards that…’directly the withdrawal began the enemy, in great numbers, followed in rear, while violent machine gun fire from both flanks, swept the ground over which the intrepid troops of the 18TH Brigade were retiring, thus giving no chance for an organised retirement’…[6]
I other words a route had taken place, and it had been a case of every man for himself as the handful of men had fought their way towards the flimsy British line of resistance. By half past seven during the evening of the 21ST the Brigade’s survivors had made it to the Corps Line where they had been ‘very badly handled’ by enemy fire until the evening of the 22ND of March when the gallant band, numbering around fifty men by this time, had finally been driven out of their positions to retreat through Morchies to a line which had been tenuously held behind the village.
During the evening of the 22ND/23RD of March the remnants of 18TH Brigade had been relieved in the line, the men marching back to the relative safety of Achiet le Petit, where the pitiful remains of the once proud battalion had assembled for the customary post battle calling of the roll which had revealed that of the thirty officers and six hundred and thirty nine men of the 2ND D.L.I who had gone into action a couple of days earlier, only two officer and twenty two other ranks had answered to their names being called. The 11TH Essex had consisted of five officers and seventy other ranks out of twenty-five officers and five hundred and one men. The situation had been little different with the 1ST West Yorkshire’ which had gone into battle on the morning of the twenty first with a complement of twenty four officers and six hundred and thirty nine other ranks. By the end only one officer and eighteen other ranks had remained.
Five hundred and thirty one officers and men of the First Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment, including Lt. Col. Boyall, had consequently been reported as missing in action. Amongst them had been thirty years old; 28092 Private Herbert Stonehouse.
Born in Scarborough on the 6TH of June 1888, at No.74 Trafalgar Street West [known locally as ‘Penny Black Lane’], Herbert had been the eldest son of Sarah and Johnson Stonehouse, a ‘general labourer’, who had still been living in Trafalgar Street West during 1918. [7]
A pupil of the Central Board School between 1892 and 1902, Herbert had left the school at the customary age of thirteen to become an errand boy in the Gladstone Road shop of local ‘grocer, provision dealer and Italian warehouseman’ William Vasey and had remained in his employ until 1910 when Herbert had begun work in the Westborough shop of ‘family grocer, tea dealer, and provision dealer’, John Rowntree & Sons. However, by the outbreak of war Stonehouse had been employed in the grocery trade in the City of York, where he had enlisted into the West Yorkshire Regiment during September 1915.
Initially stationed at York’s Fulford Barracks with the regiment’s the 13TH [Reserve] Battalion, Stonehouse had remained in England until December 1916. During this time he had been married by special licence on the 27TH of June 1916 at Scarborough’s Bar Church to Clara, the twenty-five years old eldest daughter of Elizabeth and Frederick William Nundy, who had been residing at the time at No.23 Roseberry Avenue.
During late December Stonehouse had been placed amongst a draft of replacements for battle casualties sustained by the sixteen battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment which had been serving in France and Belgium at that time, and had eventually joined the 1ST Battalion [one of two pre war regular army formation belonging to the West Yorkshire Regiment] in Northern France, near to the town of Bethune, where the battalion had been manning the front line trenches in the ‘relatively quiet’ Cambrin Sector of the Western Front.
Stationed at Lichfield at the outbreak of war, the 1ST West Yorkshire’s had landed at St Nazaire on the 10TH of September 1914 with the 6TH [Regular Army] Division in time to assist the hard pressed British Expeditionary force in the fierce fighting on the Aisne. Shortly moved to the Ypres Sector, the battalion had taken part in many of the operations which had taken place on the Western Front since 1914, including the recently shut down [November] Somme Offensive of 1916, where the 1ST West York’s had been involved in the Battles of Flers/Coucelette [15-22 September], Morval [25-28 September], and the Transloy Ridges [1-18 October], where on the 12TH of October the battalion had sustained heavy casualties in a futile attack on two German held positions known as ‘Misty’ and ‘Cloudy’ Trenches, which had resulted in the sorely depleted battalion being forced to move from the Somme to the relative quietness of the Bethune area to recuperate.
The next six months of Herbert Stonehouse’s life had been spent in the positions near Cambrin. Although described as a ‘comparatively quiet part of the line’, life there for Private Stonehouse and his comrades had been far from tranquil. The battalion’s historian describes…
‘Months of trench warfare, at times of a very strenuous nature, now lay before the West Yorkshiremen, and from the Battalion Diaries it is evident, that in 1917, despite the fact that the enemy was kept busy in other sectors of the line along the British front, he was nonetheless aggressive, and raids and counter-raids were frequent, whilst constant vigilance was necessary; bomb actions, heavy artillery bombardments, sniping and machine gunning took place at all times, while the repair of trenches and improvements of the defences occupied the troops during the brief periods when they were not otherwise engaged’… [6]
Spared from the blood baths of the Arras Offensive [March- May 1917] and the Third Battle of Ypres [July – November 1917], the First West Yorkshire’s next large scale operation had been the Cambrai ‘affair’ which had begun on the 20TH of November 1917. During the night of the 19th/20th of November the 18TH Brigade had assembled to the south west of the village of Beaucamp from where at Zero Hour the following day the formation had launched its attack on the Brigade’s allotted objectives, namely the capture of the ‘Hindenburg Front line system’, secondly the ‘Blue Line’ [a line running between the Hindenburg Main and Support Lines], including the village of Ribecourt, and thirdly the Hindenburg Support Line.
The Brigade’s operation had been very successful, all units taking their objectives for very little loss, the 1ST West Yorkshire’s by the end of the day being ensconced in positions on ‘Premy Chapel Ridge’ for the loss of just one man killed [57928 Private Henry Govens] and two officers and eleven men wounded. As a whole the 1ST West Yorkshire’s had played no further part in the Cambrai Offensive, the unit remaining on in their positions on the ridge above Premy Chapel until the evening of the 24TH of November, when Stonehouse and the remainder of the battalion had moved back to billets at Ribecourt.
The men of the 1ST West Yorkshire’s had spent the winter of 1917 either digging new trenches or repairing old ones. On the 12TH of December the men of the battalion had boarded buses, which had transported them to billets at Blaireville. Three days had been spent in relative comfort there; however, on the 16TH of December the battalion had taken over a sector of the front line opposite the German held village of Riencourt
Where the men had been set to work digging a new trench system. Christmas had been spent in Blaireville, where the unit had received Christmas greetings from the regiment’s Commander in Chief, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales [who had been in Italy at the time]. Soon afterwards, on the 27TH of December, the battalion had moved to the Moeuvres sector where until the 17TH of January 1918 the men had ‘enjoyed a well earned rest’. This rest period had been followed by a spell in the front line at Moeuvres…’where several days of quietude were spent. The enemy appears to have been inactive though both sides were vigilant’…
The battalion had remained in the front line at Moeuvres until the 13TH of March 1918, when the formation had moved up into the right sub sector of the front at Morchies, where the unit had remained in relative peace until the start of the German Offensive eight days later [during the night of the 20TH of March the Battalion’s War Diarist had recorded...’quiet day and night’].
Having already lost a brother to the war, Clara Stonehouse had been no stranger to the shock of hearing that a loved one was missing. Nevertheless, one can barely begin to imagine her reaction on a terrible day in April when she had received word that her husband had reportedly been lost in fighting to the south of Pronville, probably on the 21ST of March. The terrible tidings had eventually been included in a lengthy casualty list that had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 26TH of April 1918;
‘Missing - Official news has been received by his parents, 74, Trafalgar Street West, that Private H. Stonehouse, West Yorks, who is married, has been missing since March 21ST. He has been in France for about two years’…[8]
No further news of Herbert’s fate had been received until the beginning of July when Clara Stonehouse had received information from the War Office telling her that her husband had been killed in action on Thursday the 21ST of March. Once again the news had been featured in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ [Friday the 5TH of July 1918].
‘Missing man now reported killed - Mrs. Stonehouse, of 25 Roseberry Avenue, has received official news that her husband Private H. Stonehouse, of the West Yorkshire Regiment, who was reported missing on the 21ST of March, is now reported to have been killed on that date. He has been in France for two years and was over on leave in February. He joined from York, where he was in the employ of a firm of grocers. Previous to which he was employed at Messrs. Rowntrees, grocers, Scarborough’…
Despite numerous post war searches of the Arras battlefield, which had been undertaken by the then Imperial War Graves Commission, no remains of a soldier, identifiable, as those of Herbert Stonehouse had ever been found. To the present day ‘missing in action’, Herbert’s name can be found on Panel 5 of the Arras Memorial. Located in the Faubourg-d’ Amiens Cemetery in the western part of the city of Arras, the Memorial commemorates the names of almost 35,000 British, New Zealand, and South African servicemen who like Private Stonehouse, had lost their lives in the Arras Sector between the Spring of 1916 and the 7TH of August 1918 [excluding casualties of the Battle of Cambrai] for whom there exists no known grave.
A year after the death of her husband Clara Stonehouse had placed an epitaph in the ‘In Memoriam’ section of the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 21ST of March 1919;
‘In loving memory of Private H. Stonehouse, West Yorkshire Regiment, the beloved husband of Clara Stonehouse, 25 Roseberry Avenue, who fell in action March 21ST 1918. People think that that we forgot them when they see us smile. But they little know the sorrow the smile hides all the while. —From his loving wife’…
Apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, in Scarborough Herbert’s name is commemorated on a gravestone in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section L, Row 19, Grave 28], which also commemorates the name of younger brother Francis Richard Stonehouse. Born in Scarborough during 1893 Frank had also served during the war, as a Private [Regimental Number 205713] in the Labour Corps. Gassed during 1917 he had subsequently died prematurely at the age of thirty-one, from the effects of Mustard gas, at the family’s home at No. 74 Trafalgar Street West on Monday the 11TH of August 1924[interred on the 14TH of August].
Herbert’s father, Johnson Stonehouse had subsequently passed away [also at 74 Trafalgar Street West] at the age of seventy eight years, on Sunday the 5TH of September 1937 [interred on the 8TH of September], whilst his mother Sarah Stonehouse, had also died in the house in Trafalgar Street West on Thursday the 26TH of April 1945 [interred 30TH of April], at the age of eighty two years, both names are also featured on the gravestone.
Despite extensive research the fate of Clara Stonehouse is not known. Whether she had remarried or had moved away from the town is uncertain, her name does not appear in any of Scarborough’s post war electoral rolls and one can only hope that she had found happiness at some stage in her life.
By the onset of darkness of the first day of their ‘Kaiserschlacht’, although they had not achieved all of their objectives, the Germans had had good reason to be reasonably pleased with themselves. On the British Fifth Army’s front the German infantry had overrun the Forward Zone, and in many places were across, or well inside the Battle Zone. In the south, from La Fere to the Somme Canal, the Battle Zone had already been in their hands, and the Third Corps had been making plans to withdraw overnight to a line some two miles behind the Battle Zone, located at the Crozat Canal known as the Rear Zone. The cost of the first day had been high. The Germans had suffered over 40,000 casualties and had inflicted nearly as many on the British who had lost over 38,000 men, of which 28,000 had been made prisoners of war by nightfall.
At ten minutes to eleven that night British General Headquarters had released a communiqué to the British Press. The ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 22ND of March 1918 had reported;
‘Great German offensive - Biggest operations of the war - At about 8 this morning after an intense bombardment of both high explosive and gas shells on forward positions and back areas a powerful infantry attack was launched by the enemy by the enemy on a front of over fifty miles, extending from the River Oise, in the neighbourhood of Le Fere, to the Sensee, about Croiselles.
Hostile artillery demonstrations have taken place on a wide front north of La Bassee Canal and in the Ypres Sector. The attack, which for some time past was known to be in course of preparation, has been pressed with the greatest vigour and determination throughout the day.
In the course of the fighting the enemy broke through our outpost positions and succeeded in penetrating into our battle positions in certain parts of the front.
The attack was delivered in large masses, and have been extremely costly to the hostile troops engaged, whose losses have been exceptionally heavy.
Severe fighting continues along the whole front’….
In some places, especially around the village of Epehy, the Germans had indeed come up against some stout resistance, and whilst the folks back home had been reading the largely distorted accounts of the battle in their newspapers that evening a number of men had still been waging a ferocious war of attrition against their opponents.
Immediately to the south of 6TH Division the defence of the British line had been taken over by Seventh Corps of Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army. Beginning at the southern end of the so-called ‘Flesquieres Salient’, this sector of the front had been held by [from north to south], the 9TH[Scottish], 21ST, and 16TH[Irish] Divisions. On the first day of the offensive it had been the men of the South African Infantry Brigade that had borne the brunt of the German Second Army’s attack on 9TH Scottish. Holding Gauche Wood, the men of the 2ND South Africans had held on to their positions until about Midday when the forty surviving members of the unit which had gone into action with a strength of around one hundred and thirty officers and men, had been finally been pushed out of the wood.
South of the South Africans the line had been held by Major General D.‘Soarer’ Campbell’s 21ST Division, which had been responsible for the defence of ‘Chapel Hill’ on the left, ‘Vaucelette Farm’ in the middle, and the village of Epehy on the right. The capture of this sector had been considered of vital importance to the Germans because it had been through there that they had intended to drive the southern arm of the Flesquieres Salient.
At Chapel Hill the 1ST Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment had also put up a fierce resistance to the German hordes, and with the help of reinforcements from the neighbouring South Africans had managed to hold on to the majority of their most important hill. At Vaucelette Farm, however, standing in a valley between Chapel Hill and Epehy, it had been a different tale, and although the farm’s garrison from the 12TH/13TH Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers had managed to hold on to their positions for two hours, before they had finally been ejected by the Germans, also at around midday, with the assistance of trench mortars. Standing between Cambrai and Peronne, and some fifteen kilometres to the north of St Quentin, the defence of the tiny village of Epehy had been the responsibility of 21ST Division’s 110TH [Leicestershire] Brigade, which had consisted of three battalions the 6TH, 7TH, and 8TH of the Leicestershire Regiment.
On the morning of the attack, the left hand section of 110TH Brigade’s sector [Pezieres to Epehy village] of the line had been held by the 7TH Battalion, and on the right by the 8TH Battalion, whilst the 6TH Battalion had been held in reserve to the west of Ephey in positions known as the ‘Yellow Line’. An hour before dawn the Leicesters front line positions had been evacuated as planned thus minimising the risk of the defenders being surrounded and cut off and the number of casualties suffered in the preliminary bombardment. The two front line battalions had then taken up positions in the ‘Red Line’, a series of concrete blockhouses, which had been dotted round the village, where they had awaited the arrival of the enemy. They hadn’t long to wait. Lance Corporal Sydney North [7TH Leicesters] tells of;
‘The fog became less dense; the sun broke through and almost at once the fog cleared, revealing an amazing sight. The foremost of the enemy infantry, completely disorganised by the fog, were trying to get sorted out. Not far behind them came several platoons of infantry moving in solid blocks, four men abreast. Behind them were groups of cavalry coming on at walking pace and further behind, about 600 yards away, were horse drawn general service wagons and horse drawn ambulances. It was like a panorama on a huge canvas and we simply could not believe it….
The Germans were moving forward as if they expected no opposition. We opened fire. The Lewis Guns got busy and the enemy groups scattered. They had very little cover and no chance of survival…after a while nothing was moving throughout the whole visible front except for a few riderless horses, terrified by the shooting. We could here the screams of stricken horses; I was glad when they eventually galloped away from the scene. We watched, but there was no sign of any further attack and we wondered what had been going on on our right flank.
Locking to our right, we could see Jerry troops steadily making their way into territory we had been told was held by the 16TH[Irish] Division. About half a mile to our right, we could see the Germans moving forward in single file and many were already well behind us. It was not yet midday. Jerry was moving as if there was no opposition and we reckoned we were in real trouble on the flank’…[9]
The Leicesters had indeed been ‘in real trouble’, and by midday had been embroiled in a ferocious fight for life which had lasted throughout the remainder of the day. The War Diary of the 7TH Leicesters reports;
‘During the whole of the day the enemy made many futile attacks from NE of Fir Tree Support and Red Line, attempting to bomb down the latter from Squash Trench which he had entered early in the attack. The defence of Fir Support was conducted by by 2nd Lieut. [William Samuel] Wright with about 20 men against numerous bombing attacks in one of which flamethrowers were used but these were stopped on our wire by rifle fire and the cylinders, catching alight, the enemy were burnt with their own weapons. Good work was done by the whole of this platoon and particularly by Private [Thomas] Hickin who on 2 or 3 occasions walked along the parapet firing a Lewis Gun from his hip at the enemy concentrating in the trenches in the flanks. Private Hickin was eventually killed in making one of these attack’…[10]
Soon after the start of the battle Lieutenant Colonel William Norman Stewart’s 6TH Battalion of the Leicester’s had moved forward in support of their comrades in 7TH and 8TH Battalions, the three formations holding onto their positions until the afternoon of the twenty first when the Germans had finally secured possession of the ‘Red Line’, and had broken through the 7TH Leicesters positions in the village of the Pezieres, only to be driven out again by the Battalion’s reserve company aided by two tanks, which had both done sterling service until they had ran out of petrol, at which point they had been disabled by artillery fire.
By dusk the battle at Epehy had descended into a vicious street fight, the ruined houses and lanes lined with trenches providing cover for snipers of friend and foe alike. With the approach of night the enemy’s infantry attacks had slackened whereas the enemy’s artillery bombardment of the village had been intensified to prevent the pushing forward of urgently needed reinforcements and supplies to the by now beleaguered garrison.
The second day of the ‘Kaiserschlacht’ had dawned much the same as the previous day, with a thick fog. Ever watchful for the appearance of an enemy attack there had been little sleep for the meagre garrison of the trenches in and around Ephey during the night of the twenty first and with a mixed bag of cooks, typists, bandsmen, and anyone else who could hold a rifle now amongst those preparing for a last ditch stand in a partially completed line of trenches known as the ‘Brown Line’. Hopelessly outnumbered the ‘tommies’, must have realised that the end was almost upon them as they had once again awaited the arrival of the enemy. Soon after dawn the enemy had begun a heavy bombardment of the Leicesters positions, which had inevitably been followed by a series of infantry attacks, which had once again been driven off. However, at 9am the enemy had captured three of the Leicester’s posts on the southeastern edge of Epehy from where they had advanced through the ruined village.
The gallant stand at Epehy had gone on until around midday on the 22ND, when the surviving members of the three battalions of Leicesters had been ordered to make a fighting withdrawal to Longavesnes, the 6TH and 8TH Battalions slipping away through the village of Saulcourt, whilst Captain Vanner and the remnants of 7TH Battalion had blown up two bridges over a railway cutting just north of Peiziere in the hope of further delaying their pursuing foe.
Having delayed the German advance for over thirty six hours the Leicesters gallant action at Epehy had obviously been a thorn in the side of the German advance and had been described in one German history as a ‘flood breaker’. The three battalions of the Leicestershire Regiment had acquitted themselves admirably during the 21ST [and 22ND] of March 1918, Middlebrook say’s of their action at Epehy…’Few regiments had upheld their reputations so well on this day’…[9]
Although the three Battalions of the Leicestershire Regiment had lived to fight another day, the price paid for their indomitably had been expensive, and by the 30TH of March it had been found that the Leicestershire Brigade had lost thirty-one officers and 1200 men, killed, wounded, and missing. Many of the latter had subsequently been found to have been taken prisoner during this period; nevertheless, a great many of them were to remain ‘missing’ forever. Amongst them had been nineteen years old: 46295 Private William Herbert Goodrick.
Belonging to ‘B’ Company of the 6TH Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment, William had been born during 1898 in the ‘bottom end’ of Scarborough at No.69 Eastborough, and had been the eighth of nine children of Jessie and Richard Goodrick, who had been employed as a postman. A pupil of St Mary’s Parish School and Friarage Council School, by the outbreak of war William had been employed as an errand boy in the South Street shop of for local grocers and wine merchants William C. Land & Co., still only aged fifteen years of age had obviously been considered too young for military service. However, by the autumn of 1917, shortly before celebrating his nineteenth birthday, William Goodrick had enlisted into the army at Scarborough’s Castle Road Court House. [11]
Although one would have expected a Yorkshireman to serve in a local regiment, by late 1917 heavy casualties and n acute shortage of recruits had dictated men like Goodrick, and the throngs of young men [many underage] who had joined the army at this stage in the war had had little say in the matter of which unit they had served with, thus, by the onset of winter Goodrick had found himself posted to the Leicestershire Regimental Depot at Wigston Barracks [also known as ‘Glen Parva Barracks’], which had been located in Saffron Road, South Wigston.
Whilst William Goodrick had been undergoing [with the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion] his basic course of infantry training at Leicester, the remnants of the 6TH [Service] Battalion had been moving from the Ypres Sector [having recently suffered heavy casualties in the Third Battle of Ypres] to the Cambrai sector where they had been intended as reinforcements to help stem the German counter attack of the 30TH of December. Nevertheless, by the time that the division’s various unit’s had been in place the repeated German attacks had petered out and the Battalion had spent the remainder of what many would recall as the worst winter in living memory improving the defences of the Epehy district. A task which had involved digging new emplacements and trenches in front of the village and assisting the Royal Engineers within the village itself with the construction of a series of concrete blockhouses, emplacements, and observation posts which unknowingly were to play a very important part in the battle of 21ST –22ND of March.
At the beginning of January 1918 Private Goodrick had been included in a draft of eighteen and nineteen year old replacements destined for France to fill the ranks of the depleted three battalions of Leicesters.
In the same draft as Goodrick had been eighteen years old 41367 Private Frank Pothecary, who would later recall his impressions of their first few days of life at the front;
‘The [6TH] battalion was in the line at Epehy and we was at Saulcourt and we had to go up each evening as carrying parties and go out to repair the barbed wire which was very frightening at first. Our officer said ‘don’t worry, if you are going to get it, you wont know anything about it’ and that took some of the fear away…we lived in a deep dugout with two entrances [about thirty steps down]. We had to pass through a gas prevention chamber half way down. The beds were wire netting racks, three tiers high, and the only light was a few candles. It was always hot and stuffy. At the top of the steps there was always a gas guard who would beat on a hanging shell case when there was gas about. He would also use a spinning rattle.
We had to go down to the front line every day and repair damage and do anything which needed doing, digging latrines etc [never a dull moment]. We had three days of this and then the front line. Here we lived in slits cut in the front [beneath] the parapet, and covered with a groundsheet. Food came up in big containers from the field kitchens carried on stretcher type wooden frames, ‘no fires in the line’. At dusk, we had ‘stand to’ and then it was ‘two hours on, four hours off’ to stand on the fire step all night, which was a cold and dreary job. Sometimes great rats run just in front of you and put the wind up you. At dawn everyone ‘stands to’ after which we would have a foot inspection and whale oil would be issued to rub on the feet to prevent frostbite’…[12]
[Unlike Private Goodrick, Frank Pothecary had survived the German Spring Offensive and the remainder of the war].
Due to the immense disruption caused during the Spring Offensive little is known of the fate of many of the Leicesters who had gone missing during the initial stages of the operation, whether their remains had been buried by the Germans and the graves lost during the remainder of the war, or whether they simply had been blown to bits by shellfire is not known. The Goodrick’s, like most families during the war, had never found out what had really happened to their son and had only been told by the War Office, many weeks after the event, that he had been reported as missing in action, a report which had eventually been amended to ‘missing believed killed in action’, probably on the 22ND of March 1918.
Another Scarborough casualty with who had perished with barely a whisper and possessing no known grave, the name of Private William Herbert Goodrick [incorrectly recorded by the C.W.G.C. as Herbert William] like those of many comrades who had been reported missing during the Spring of 1918 had subsequently been included on the Pozieres Memorial to the Missing along with the names of over 14,000 fellow missing casualties who had fallen in the Somme sector of France from the 21ST of March to the 7TH of August 1918. William’s name can be found amongst the names of the missing of the Leicestershire Regiment who are commemorated on Panels 29 and 30 of the Memorial, along with that of the gallant 25264 Private Thomas Hickin.
Apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Private Goodrick’s name is commemorated in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section B, Row 18, Grave 3], on a gravestone, which also includes the names of parents; Jessie Goodrick, who had died at her home at No.5 Henrietta Court, St Thomas Street, on Sunday the 16TH of August 1931 at the age of sixty seven years. A Scarborough postman for over thirty years, Richard Goodrick had subsequently passed away at No.38 Murchison Street on Wednesday the 22ND of October 1941.
William’s elder brother, Arthur Edward Goodrick, a former Scarborough postman had served during the war [Regimental Number 86038] with the Royal Field Artillery and although wounded during September 1916 he had survived the war together with sister Edith Mary who had served during the conflict as a Sister and Staff Nurse with the Territorial Nursing Service.
Also amongst those killed during the second day of the ‘Kaiserschlacht’ had been twenty-seven years old’; 34486 Private Albert Davison. Born in Scarborough at No.4 Bedford Street during 1891, Albert, popularly known as ‘Bert’, had been the fourth of five children of Martha [‘Pattie’] and Stephen Davison, who had variously been employed as a ‘coal porter, labourer, and by the turn of the century as a ‘greengrocer’, the family living in Scarborough at No.54 North Street. [13]
A pupil of Scarborough’s Central Board School between the ages of four and thirteen, Bert had left the school during 1904 to work initially in the family greengrocery business, the family living by this time at 109 Prospect Road. By the outbreak of war, however, Bert had been working in the grocery trade at Derby, nevertheless, Bert had returned to Scarborough during 1916 to be married at Bar Congregational Church on Thursday the 14TH of December to Eva May Hall, the twenty-six years old daughter of Eliza and shoemaker, George Hall. Bert Davison and his bride had subsequently set up home with elder brother Fred and Frances Caroline Davison, at No.108 Moorland Road [where Albert and Eva’s only son, also to be named Albert, would be born on the 21ST of April 1918].
‘Called up’ for war service during June 1916, Davison had eventually been enrolled into the army at the Sherwood Foresters Depot in Derby on the 21ST of May 1917, where despite expressing a preference for service with the Royal Flying Corps the twenty seven years old had been enlisted into the Leicestershire Regiment, serving between the 21ST of May and the 25TH of September 1917 at Leicester’s Wigston Barracks with the Regiment’s 3RD [Reserve] Battalion until he had eventually posted to the 7TH [Service] battalion of the Leicester’s, Davison embarking for France at Folkestone on the 25TH of September 1917. Arriving in France the following day, Davison had duly joined his new Battalion, which had been serving on the Western Front with the 110TH Brigade of 21ST Division. Bert had remained with the 7TH Leicesters until the 8TH of February 1918, when he had been posted to the 11TH Leicesters.
One of sixty eight battalions of Pioneers which had been raised during 1915 to provide skilled labour for the newly formed Kitchener’s ‘New Army’ Divisions, by the time that Bert Davison had joined the unit the 11TH Leicester’s, dubbed the ‘Midland Pioneers’, and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Turner, had been stationed in France at Fremicourt from where the unit’s four companies had been engaged in various work assignments at nearby Lagnicourt, including digging deep dugouts, the construction of a light railway, and scraping and cleaning of roads.
The battalion had still been at Fremicourt on the opening day of ‘kaiserschlacht’. The battalion’s ‘War Diary’ of the twenty first of March reports;
’12-10am Received orders from Division to ‘Stand to’. In the Vaulx –Morchies Line’, Companies in position by 5am’…’The enemy attacked heavily after an intense bombardment [which lasted from about 05.00am] at 08.00am and established themselves in position in front of the wire of the Vaulx-Morchies Line by the evening’…[14]
Unfortunately the 11TH Battalion’s ‘War Diary’ records no further details of the action on the twenty first except to report that at 5-30pm Battalion Headquarters had… ‘Received message from Sgt. Barratt, acting Company Sergeant Major of ‘D’ Company, to the effect that all the officers of his company had become casualties and that he was in command of the company…Six officers and about 30 other ranks were sent up from H.Q. to reinforce ‘D’Company’…[14]
During the morning of Thursday the twenty second of March the surviving Midland Pioneers had been ordered to retire to the so-called ‘Army Line’. The move being completed by mid afternoon. Evidence suggests that during this operation only one man, possibly Bert Davison, had been killed…’Transport moved to Pioneer Camp, Logeast Wood, one man of the transport was killed by shellfire’…[14]
Like the relatives of all the casualties at this chaotic stage of the war Eva Davison had initially been informed that her husband had been reported as ‘missing in action’ and had lived for some time with the hope, also like most of the relatives, that Bert had been taken prisoner. Whilst eagerly awaiting news of her husband, on Sunday the 21ST of April, Eva had given birth to a son, the happy occasion being marred some days later by the arrival of the official notification of Bert’s death. The tidings had been included in an extensive casualty list, which had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 26TH of April 1918;
‘Private A. Davison killed in action - Official news has been received by his wife at 108 Moorland Road, that Private Albert Davison, Leicesters, has been killed in action, March 22ND. He went out last August, and was expected to come on leave this month. He was the son of Mr. Stephen Davison, 27 Nelson Street, and son in law of Mr George Hall, bootmaker. Private Davison was married and leaves one child, born on Sunday last. He was aged 28. There are three brothers serving. Private Davison was well known in local football circles’…
No further news of Private Davison had ever been received. Eva, living by this time in Scarborough at No.11 Victoria Road, had eventually received a small widow’s pension and two Medals [the British War, and Victory Medals] in recompense for her lost husband and father of a son that he had never seen. Probably blown to bits on the twenty second, no remains of a soldier, identifiable as those of Private Davison, had been found, and to the present day Albert Davison remains ‘missing, believed killed in action’ on the 22ND of March 1918.
During the post war years Bert Davison’s name had been included in Bay 5 of Sir Edward Lutyens’s Arras Memorial. Located in the Faubourg-d’Amiens Cemetery in the western part of the town of Arras the memorial contains the names of almost 35,000 casualties of the British, New Zealand, and South African armed forces who, like Davison, had lost their lives in the Arras Sector between the Spring of 1916 and the 7TH of August 1918[excluding the casualties of the Cambrai Offensive of 1917] and possess no known grave.
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Davison’s name is commemorated in St Mary’s Parish Church on the ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall that lists one hundred and fifty six former members of the Parish who had lost their lives during the ‘Great War’ of 1914-19. Bert’s name can also be found on a memorial in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section N, Row 13, Grave 34], which also bears the names of his mother, ‘Pattie’ Davison, who had died in Scarborough Infirmary [No.69 Dean Road] on Sunday the 4TH of May 1914, at the age of fifty two years, and father Stephen Davison, who had died at No.6 Beechville Avenue on Thursday the 26TH of November 1942 at the age of eighty three.
Bert’s three brothers, Fred, Valentine, and Stephen Davison, had also served in the army [Royal Engineers, Machine Gun Corps, and Yorkshire Regiment respectively], all had survived to return to Scarborough following their demobilisation in 1919. Eva Davison, and her son, Albert, had resided with her parents at No11 Victoria Road until the mid 1930’s when her name disappears from Scarborough’s Electoral Rolls. By the 1950’s there had been two Albert Davison’s listed in the town’s ‘Street Directory’. One had lived with wife Marjorie at No24 Murchison Street, whilst the second had resided with wife Nora at 44 Candler Street.
Albert is one of two men with the surname of Davison commemorated on the Oliver’s Mount Memorial. The other is; Third Engineer Charles Herbert Davison.
The son of John Smith, and Emily Jane Davison, and husband of Janet Davison [formerly Barker] of No.4 Granby Place, Scarborough, Charles, a former pupil of Scarborough’s Municipal School, had lost his life at the age of twenty nine during the sinking of the Hull registered S.S. Torcello, a 1,900 tons Ellerman’s Wilson Line cargo vessel which had been torpedoed whilst on passage from Palermo to Hull by U-48 160 miles south west of Bishops Rock on the 15TH of July 1917.
Existing records indicate Charles Davison had been the ship’s only casualty on the 15TH of July, and his remains had never been recovered. He is therefore commemorated on the Tower Hill Memorial in London, which remembers over thirty seven thousand British Mercantile Marine seafarers and fishermen who had lost their lives in the two World Wars who possess no known grave but the sea.
[Already a victim of German ‘frightfulness’, two years previously when on the 29TH of March 1915, he had been aboard the Ellerman line’s 3,500 tons S.S. Flaminian when she had been captured and subsequently sunk that day by gunfire off the Scilly Isles whilst on a voyage from Cape Town to Glasgow, a photograph of Charles Davison and the S.S. Flaminian had appeared in the Scarborough Pictorial of Wednesday the 21ST of April 1915 under the banner of ‘A victim of the pirates’].
Back in the comparative safety of Fremicourt the surviving Midland Pioneers had been paraded for the customary post battle Roll call to ascertain the number of the battalion’s casualties. This had revealed the unit had lost three officers killed, and a further seven were wounded, whilst the ‘other ranks had suffered 30 men killed in action whilst a further eighty were missing. In addition, one hundred and sixty ‘other ranks’ had been wounded during the twenty first of March. Many of these men had been evacuated to various hospitals behind the front in places such as Abbeville, where another Scarborough born Midland Pioneer had succumbed to his injuries on the twenty eighth of March 1918; 23524 Company Sergeant Major Percival Stabler.
The holder of a Distinguished Conduct Medal [‘Gazetted’ in the London Gazette of the 22ND of October 1917], Percy had been born in the town during 1883, and had been the son of Sarah Jane and Joseph Stabler, a joiner and carpenter by trade who had lived for many years in Scarborough at No.39 Castle Road. For a number of years prior to the war Percy had worked in the grocery trade in Scarborough, however, by August 1914 he had been living in the North West Leicestershire market town of Coalville, where he had lived with wife Florence at ‘Storer House’, Highfields.
A member of the Midland Pioneers since the battalion’s formation during October 1915, Percy had enlisted at Leicester as a private and had worked his way through the ranks during three years service on the Western Front to the exalted rank of Company Sergeant Major by 1918 and would in all likelihood, have received a commission had he lived longer. The news of Percy’s death, at the age of thirty-five years, had been included in a casualty list, which had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday thee 12TH of April 1918.
‘D.C.M. dies of wounds - Company Sergeant Major Percy Stabler, D.C.M., Midland Pioneers has died in a French hospital from gunshot wounds in the chest. Sergeant Major Stabler volunteered for service early in the war, and joined the Midland Pioneers. He won the D.C.M. by organising a dozen men to unload an ammunition wagon which had become derailed, and was being heavily shelled by the enemy. Though under fire all the time they succeeded in saving many thousands of rounds of ammunition. Before the war Sergeant Major was manager of a business in Coalville where his wife and child reside.
He was born in Scarborough, being the son of the late Mr Joseph Stabler, joiner and cabinetmaker, who resided in Castle Road, and a nephew of Mrs. Matthew Procter. He went to Leicester from Scarborough several years ago’….
Following his death at Abbeville’s No5 Stationary Hospital, the remains of Percy Stabler had been taken to the town’s Communal Cemetery Extension [which had [and still is] been located on the side of the road leading to Drucat], where they had been interred in the Cemetery’s Section I, Row J, Grave 28.
Although a native of Scarborough, for some reason Percy Stabler’s name is not included on the town’s Oliver’s Mount War Memorial. The memorial does, however, contain the name of; 240975 Private George Frederick Stabler.
Commemorated as F. Stabler, Fred had been born in Scarborough during 1897 and had been the only son of Hannah Mary, and ‘compositor and press man’ George William Stabler, who had resided in Scarborough at No.75 Trafalgar Street at the time of their son’s death. Killed in action on the 17TH of September 1916 whilst serving with the Fifth Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, the remains of the nineteen years old Fred Stabler had never been recovered from the squalor of the Somme battlefield and his name had eventually been commemorated amongst over seventy two thousand fellow missing of the Somme Offensive on the walls of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. His name is located on Pier and Face 3A and D.
A former member of the congregation of Queen Street Methodist Chapel, Fred Stabler had been amongst twenty three members of the church who had lost their lives during the Great War who are commemorated by the Chapel’s ‘Memorial Organ’ which had been unveiled before a packed audience during the evening of the 8TH of October 1924.
[1] Looking like an oily brown sherry and smelling of onions or garlic, and some had said radishes, the so called ‘Yellow Cross’, or more commonly known ‘Mustard Gas’, had been introduced by the Germans onto the Western Front during July 1917 and had been considered a ‘humane’ form of gas in that its aim had been to harass rather than kill. Nevertheless, the gas had been the most potent gas to be used during the war. One which could lay dormant in the bottom of a trench for many days and two hours after exposure to just one part of the gas in ten million parts of air had caused fearful injuries to its victim.
[2] John Pottage and Clara Fox had been married in Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church on the 16TH of January 1895. At the time of the 1901 Census the family had still been living at No.6 Wrea Lane and had consisted of John, aged 34 years, cab driver, Clara, 29 years, Tom [recorded as ‘Harry’], aged 5years, Emma [‘Minnie’?] who had been aged 4 years. All had been Scarborough born. The family had subsequently been augmented by Clara [1902], John [popularly known as ‘Jack’ born 1905, died 1969], George [born 1909 died 1983], and Frederick Albert [born 1910 died 1992], and Frances [1914]. Jack Pottage had eventually served in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War, where he had been torpedoed twice whilst on convoy duty.
[3] I saw them die; Nurse .S Millard; Harrap; 1933.
[4] Despite being aged over fifty by the outbreak of war Tom’s father, John Pottage, had enlisted into the army where he had served with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps [Regimental Number SE 11204] in France on attachment to the 280TH Brigade of the Royal Filed Artillery, unlike his son, John had survived to return to Scarborough following his demobilisation in 1919.
[5] Machine Gunner 1914-18; C.E. Crutchley [editor] Bailey Bros & Swinfen; Folkestone; 1975.
[6] The West Yorkshire Regiment in the Great War 1914-18; Volume 2 1917-18; Everard Wyrall; The Bodley Head Ltd. London.
[7] Johnson Stonehouse and Sarah Horner had married at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 17TH of April 1886. At the time of the 1901 Census they had been living in Scarborough at 74 Trafalgar Street West, the family by this time consisting of Johnson aged 40 years employed as a ‘general labourer’ born Scarborough, Sarah, aged 38, born Scalby, Annie E. daughter, aged 14, Herbert, son, 12 years, Francis R. son, aged 7 years, all the children were born in Scarborough [at the time the family had been living with Johnson’s father, Samuel Stonehouse a widower, aged 74 years, occupation also listed as ‘general labourer’].
[8] Clara’s nineteen years old brother; 241315 Private Harold William Nundy, had been killed in action on the 22ND of April 1917 whilst serving with the 9TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. The only son of Frederick and Elizabeth Nundy, Harry had been amongst the fourteen men from the 9TH battalion who had been killed during the Arras Offensive between the 9TH and 25TH of April 1917. Much like brother in law, Herbert Stonehouse, Harry Nundy had initially been reported as missing in action, his parents receiving no news of their son’s fate until July 1917, when they had been informed that he had been killed in action, probably on the date already quoted. Like those of his brother in law, Harry’s remains had never been recovered from the field of battle to be given a decent burial and his name had also eventually been included amongst those commemorated on [Bay 5] the Arras Memorial to the Missing. The young soldier’s name can also be found on Scarborough’s Oliver’s Mount Memorial, and on the ‘Rood Screen’ Memorial in the town’s St James Church, located in Seamer Road.
[9] The Kaiser’s battle; Martin Middlebrook; Penguin; 1978.
[10] War Diary of the 7th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment; Leicestershire Records Office; 21/318; Wigston. Quoted from page 217 of Matthew Richardson’s ‘The Tigers’; Pen & Sword Books; 2000.
[11] At the time of the 1901 Census of Scarborough’s population the Goodrick’s had still been residing at No.69 Eastborough, the family consisting of Richard, 38 years of age, employed as a postman, Jessie, 37 years, Edith Mary, 18 years, Jane Beatrice, 16 years, Alfred, 14, Thomas, 12, John Richard, 10 Alice, 7, Robert Edward, 4, William, 2, and Jessie, aged five months. All had been born in Scarborough.
[12] Manuscript recollections; F.E. Pothecary; Liddle Collections, University of Leeds; courtesy of Richardson’s ‘The Tigers’.
[13] At the time of the 1901 Census the Davison family had been residing in the house in North Street and had consisted of Stephen [the eldest son of Rouse and Hannah Davison], aged 42 years, Martha, 39years, Frederick, 16 years, employed as a ‘joiners apprentice’, Valentine, 15 years, ‘employed as a ‘painters lad’, Amy aged 13, Albert aged 10, and Stephen aged 9 years. All had been born in Scarborough except for Martha Davison, who had been born in the Lincolnshire village of Glentworth.
[14] National Archives; WO /95/1601.
There had once again been thick fog on the third day of Kaiserschlact. During the morning, despite stiff opposition, the Germans had crossed the Crozat Canal, and by the afternoon had been across the Somme near the town of Ham thereby threatening Third Corps line of communications. Two divisions of French infantry had shortly arrived to assist the British in trying to hold the ‘grey avalanche’; nevertheless, despite valiant efforts the so-called ‘Great Retreat’ had continued.
Whilst the infantry had been fighting their gallant rearguard action, during the afternoon of the twenty third a ‘calm and cheerful’ Haig, who up until this time, had played little part in the course of the battle and had been unaware of the disaster which had befallen his command, had visited Gough [the commander of Fifth Army] at his Headquarters at Villers Bretonneux and would later note in his diary;
‘I was surprised to learn that his troops are now far behind the Somme and the River Tortville. Men very tired after two days fighting and long march back. On the first day they had to wear gas masks all day which is very fatiguing, but I cannot make out why the Fifth Army has gone so far back without making some kind of a stand’…[1]
Following his meeting with Gough, Haig, now fully aware of the magnitude of the disaster facing Fifth Army, had returned to his Headquarters where he had met with his French counterpart, Marshal Petain. The two leaders had discussed the impending crisis, and Petain had eventually suggested that General Fayolle [the commander of the French Reserve Army] take command of all troops between the Oise and Peronne, thus extending the French left boundary along the line of the Somme from opposite Peronne as far as Amiens, thus with the exception of the British Seventh Corps north of the Somme, the remnants of Gough’s Fifth Army would in effect be commanded by Fayolle. Haig had readily agreed to the suggestion totally aware of the critical need for reinforcements.
For the troops on the ground the day had been one long miserable footsore retreat to the Somme, so reminiscent of a similar retreat from Mons almost four years earlier. A machine gunner with the 42ND Division [Lieutenant Richard Gale] would later describe…
‘Dumps of kit and valises lay n the side of the road, disorganised transport and guns were moving to the rear, all intermingled with pathetic groups of refugees…Canteens had been abandoned and their stores of spirits rifled. This was a retreat with all the horrors of panic. There was, as far as we knew, nothing behind us and the Channel ports, save this wretched rabble seemed to have lost all cohesion and the will to fight’…
During the afternoon of the twenty third Ludendorff had issued orders that were to change the German campaign entirely. Faced with a slow and costly advance in the north of the assault the General had decided to concentrate all his effort in the south, where his men had already advanced some forty miles into Allied territory. Thus, the German Fourteenth Army had been ordered to head for St Pol, due west of Arras, whilst the Second Army was to advance straddling the River Somme towards Amiens. In addition, the Seventeenth Army was to head southwest to prevent the repair of the junction between the British and the French. In effect Ludendorff had been scattering his effort in the assumption that the British were already beaten and that the French would look after number one and try to hold onto their own lines. He had almost been proved right.
Often referred to as ‘Sad Sunday’, the 24TH of March [Palm Sunday] had dawned for a change with only a ground mist, which had soon disappeared. Nonetheless, in the south, the German advance had continued virtually unhindered. General Maxse’s Eighteenth Corps [consisting of 20TH and 30TH Divisions, by this time part of the French 3RD army] had still retained a tenuous hold on the Somme to the north of Ham, however, from there two German divisions had pushed forward to fall on the already much depleted 36TH [Ulster] Division, destroying two more battalions of infantry in the process. Nevertheless, On a happier note, due south of Ham, at Villeselve at around 2pm that afternoon one hundred and fifty cavalrymen of the British 6TH Cavalry Brigade had charged units of the German 5TH Guard Division killing and wounding around eighty eight of the enemy with their sabres and taking a further one hundred and seven prisoners at a cost of seventy three casualties to themselves.
The situation had been as equally bleak on Third Army’s front to the north. Whilst the Sixth and Seventeenth Corps on the left flank had stood virtually in their original positions, the right of Fifth Corps had been driven back over fifteen miles and had taken up positions in the High Wood area of the old Somme battlefield of 1916, and during the afternoon General Headquarters had ordered Third Army to fall back even further, to the line of the Ancre [a tributary of the Somme].
On Tuesday the twenty sixth of March the British had abandoned the city of Albert. Long a symbol of the enduring British presence on the Somme, the city had fallen with barely a whisper. Whilst the men of the German 3RD Marine, and 51ST Reserve Divisions had been making their victorious way into the already shattered city to savour the delights of the numerous abandoned wine cellars, away in the town of Doullens a high level meeting between the British and French had taken place to discuss the sorry state of affairs. On the French side had been Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and Generals Foch and Petain, whilst on the British side Haig, Lord Milner, and Sir Henry Wilson had attended.
Trouble between the two factions had erupted almost immediately when Petain had compared the present British withdrawal to the recent flight of the Italians at Caporetto, however, a semblance of order had eventually been achieved and the meeting had continued. The restless Foch, would could barely control his emotions, had exclaimed ‘we must fight in front of Amiens, we must fight where we are now. As we have not been able to stop the Germans on the Somme, we must not now retire a single inch’…Fighting talk indeed. Haig was impressed by the General’s words, words he had in fact been anxiously waiting for anyone to say. Soon a scheme had been hatched between the British and French whereby Haig had taken the previously unimaginable step of committing his forces to the control of the French General Foch.
Foch, in his new overall command role had subsequently ordered that there be no further retirement and that all present positions must be maintained, Amiens must be defended to the last, there was to be no separation of French and British forces, and that the Fifth Army front should be reinforced. Reinforcements were indeed on their way at that moment. The Fifth Division would soon arrive from Italy, and four Australian and New Zealand Divisions were to come from Second Army, whilst the French had ordered five of their divisions southwards.
Amongst those hurrying south had been the men of the 62ND [2ND west Riding] Division. A Territorial Army formation, which at the start of Kaiserschlact had been holding the line some seven miles north of Arras in the Acheville and Arleux sectors. The Division had begun to make its journey southwards on the 23RD of March and had eventually reached the town of Bucquoy by a series of night marches by the 26TH. Attached to Fifth Army’s Fourth Corps, the division, consisting of the customary three brigades of infantry and supporting artillery and transport units had been tasked with providing a rearguard in the line at Bucquoy for the depleted British formations that had been retreating through the old Somme battlefield.
By late evening of the twenty sixth the Division’s 187TH Brigade, consisting of the 2ND/4TH, and 5TH Battalion’s of the King’s Own [Yorkshire Light Infantry], [the 2/4TH [Hallamshire] Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment had been kept in reserve] had taken up a defensive flank in a labyrinth of old trenches in the Bucquoy-Puisieux line, on the extreme right of Fourth Corps facing an enemy held position known as ‘Rossignol Wood’, from where the brigade had come under heavy machine gun fire. Expecting an enemy attack at any moment the men of 2/4 and 5TH K.O.Y.L.I. had prepared themselves for a fight. Despite a feeling of impending danger the night had passed quietly and without incident except for some sniping by the enemy; nevertheless, at around 9am the following day large masses of enemy soldiers had been spotted making preparations to attack their position
’The O.C. ‘B’ Company reported them to be massing in a sunken road to his front. He asked urgently for bombs, but no bombs were available. The position was a network of old trenches up which the usual bombing parties might be expected to attack, and without bombs for countering the attacks the defenders were at a great disadvantage. ‘B’ and ‘A’ Companies were attacked; the attacks were repeated throughout the day. Twice ‘B’ Company was driven out of the trenches, and twice it recovered them by counter assault. Heavy casualties were inflicted on the attackers whenever they showed themselves in the open, but when they came bombing up the communication trenches there was no adequate means of opposing them’…[2]
Desperate fighting had continued until around 4pm when the West Yorkshire positions had finally been shelled out of their positions by artillery and trench mortars, in addition to being bombed by aircraft, and despite a desperate attempt to hold on the battered 2/4TH had been forced to retire having lost over a hundred and sixty officers and men. Later that night the four companies [each consisting of many eighteen and nineteen years old soldiers] of the 5TH K.OY.L.I. had moved into the line in readiness for a counter attack, which was to be mounted the following day.
The 5TH K.O.Y.L.I. had launched its assault before dawn [4-15am] on the 28TH of March, the attackers soon coming up against heavy fire from machine guns hidden in Rossignol Wood;
’Three of these, at least, were taken with a rush, but not before they had done fearful execution amongst the assaulting companies. Captain B.A. Beach saw about twenty five men lying in the open and called on them to come on, but found that they were all dead men. Bombs had been issued in time for this advance and there were bombing fights all down the line. It was obvious that the companies had bumped into a strongly held outpost line’…[2]
Despite heavy losses the Battalion had retaken the Brigade’s old positions before daybreak and had just begun to consolidate their precarious hold on their old positions when the enemy had launched a counter attack their own, which had fell on the Yorkshiremen with a vengeance. Outnumbered and virtually surrounded the beleaguered West Yorkshiremen had managed to send a final message to Battalion Headquarters asking for more bombs and reinforcements, neither of which had been received. A short while later the enemy had launched another assault. One of the few survivors of the attack had later recorded…
’It was not long before we saw the enemy in open order on the skyline to our left front, advancing in strength down the hill. The sun was in our eyes, making it hard to spot targets below the skyline. The enemy were well covered by machine guns, which harassed us greatly. Soon one gun was enfilading our straight line of trench making it untenable. 2/Lt. F.C. Lambert spotted this gun and with his Lewis gun he either silenced it or made it move. Our next trouble was from a [disabled] tank in front. The Germans were either in it or behind it, and we could not silence it. The position was becoming very unpleasant, we were suffering heavily too.
I made one or two journeys to get men from the higher end [of the trench]. On my way back from one of these journeys I noticed that the German machine gunners had crept closer, and I found that Lt. Lambert and the men around him were dead and their gun damaged.
Shortly after I found that the men on my left were being driven back on me by a bombing party of the enemy; they were attempting to reply with their rifles. Some tried to leave the trench in an endeavour to extricate themselves, but they were immediately shot down. Bombing and machine gun fighting gradually died down. I found myself left with an officer and about four men, and discovered the enemy right in our rear to be advancing on us by way of the old communication trench; they were between us and Rossignol Wood. It was obvious that unless we move quickly we should be hopelessly lost. We were already lost, but could not realise it’…[2]
[The unnamed author of the above account had eventually been taken prisoner by men of the elite Prussian Guard, who he had noted as ‘absolutely fresh, shaved, clean boots, with uniform and equipment in perfect condition. Their open fighting was excellent and outmatched ours, whose only experience had been in trench warfare’].
Spasmodic fighting had continued throughout the remainder of that day. At around 5-30pm Fifth Battalion’s C.O., Lieutenant Colonel Cyril Spencer Watson, had set out with his sole remaining ‘D’ Company to try to reinforce his hard pressed front. By this time the K.O.Y.L.I.’s position had been surrounded and Watson had found his way solidly blocked by enemy troops. Deciding that there was no other sane option open to him other than to retire he had ordered the company to fall back. Being the gentleman he had reportedly been Colonel Watson had allowed his men to fall back whilst he had remained behind in a communication trench to hold back the enemy for as long as he could armed with little more than his service revolver. Inevitably, Watson had been killed at some point during the withdrawal and his remains had never been recovered. Lieutenant Colonel Watson had subsequently been awarded with a posthumous Victoria Cross during May 1918 [‘Gazetted’ in the London Gazette of the 8TH of May 1918].
Unbelievably, the remnants of the two battalions had continued to hold their line until the welcome arrival of Australian troops during the evening of the twenty eighth, and although their positions had continued to be heavily bombarded by artillery there had been no further infantry attacks the surviving members of the 2/4th, and 5TH K.O.Y.L.I. finally being allowed to return to billets in the village of Authie during the first day of April.
Whilst in the relative comfort of Authie the customary post battle calling of the two battalion’s rolls had revealed the 2ND/4TH K.O.Y.L.I. had lost over one hundred and eighty men, the strength of the battalion being reduced to seven officers and around two hundred other ranks, whilst the 5TH Battalion had lost sixteen officers killed, wounded, and missing, and the ‘other ranks’ had lost twenty eight men killed, eighty wounded, and two hundred and sixty eight missing in action, a number of these men had later been found to have been taken prisoner, nevertheless, many were never to be seen or heard of again. Amongst these had been nineteen years old 39125 Private George Arthur Lazenby.
Born in Scarborough at No.54 Wykeham Street during 1899, George had been the youngest son of Alice and James Lazenby, a labourer who had worked for many years for Scarborough Council. [3]
One of a handful of Scarborough’s First World War casualties who had died during the conflict leaving behind little or no personal information, the author had been unable to trace any information locally regarding Private Lazenby. Nevertheless, scraps of information indicate that he had been conscripted at the age of eighteen into the army at Scarborough during September 1917 and had originally been issued with the Service Number 82272 with which he had initially trained and served in the north of England with the 90TH Training Reserve Battalion. Shortages of men at the front had inevitably seen Lazenby being posted during February 1918 to an infantry-training depot in France before being posted to the Western Front and the 5TH K.O.Y.L.I.
Officially recorded as having been killed in action during Wednesday the 27TH of March 1918, the remains of George Lazenby had never been recovered from the battlefield at Rossignol Wood, his name eventually being commemorated in Bay 7 of the Memorial to the Missing at Arras. In Scarborough, George’s name is commemorated on the Oliver’s Mount Memorial [incorrectly spelt as ‘Lazemby’]. Having lived all his life in Wykeham Street one would have imagined that Lazenby had been a pupil of Gladstone Road School, however, his name is not commemorated on the School War Memorial. Neither can George’s name be found on any of Scarborough’s surviving church memorials. [4].
The missing soldier’s name is, nevertheless, commemorated on two memorials in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery. The first [broken] gravestone is located in the cemetery’s Section O, Row 9, Grave 5, and also contains the names of George’s grandparents, Charles [who had died on the 6TH of June 1900 at the age of 57 years] and Eliza Lazenby [who had passed away almost exactly a year later, on the 7TH of July 1901, at the age of 65 years]. The second memorial is located in Manor Road’s Section P, Row11, Grave 5; this also marks the final resting place of George’s parents, James Lazenby, who had died ‘suddenly’ at his home at No.54 Wykeham Street on Friday the 21ST of October 1927 at the age of 61 years. Alice Lazenby had subsequently passed away at the age of eighty-three years in the house in Wykeham Street where her children had been born and the family had lived for over fifty years during Thursday the 9TH of March 1950.
In addition to Private Lazenby, 5TH K.O.Y.L.I., and Scarborough, had lost another of its young soldier sons in the action at Rossignol Wood. Also aged nineteen, 50583 Private Herbert Thompson had been the only son of Sarah Ann and Peter Thompson, a ‘carver and guilder’ by trade who had been living in Scarborough at No.4a Alga Terrace during March 1918. The news of Herbert’s death had appeared in a casualty list which in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 26TH of April;
‘Young soldier killed - News had reached his home that Private H. Thompson, K.O.Y.L.I., son of Mr and Mrs Peter Thompson, 4a Alga Terrace, is reported killed in action on March 28TH. He was only 19 years of age and went to France in December. He was apprenticed with his father as a picture framer and gilder’…
Like those of Private Lazenby, no identifiable remains of Herbert Thompson had ever been found amongst the detritus of the battlefield, and like his fellow Scarborian, Herbert’s name is commemorated in Bay 7 of the Arras Memorial, along with that of the gallant twenty four years old Second Lieutenant Frederick Charles Lambert.
[1] The private papers of Douglas Haig 1914-19; Eyre & Spotiswoode; London; 1952.
[2] History of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the Great War 1914-1918;Wylly & Bond; 1929.
[3] At the time of the 1901 Census the Lazenby’s had still been residing at No 54 Wykeham Street, the family by this time consisting of James, 35 years, employed as a ‘navvy’, Alice, 35 years, Thomas Charles, 11 years, Mary Elizabeth, 8 years, and two years old George Arthur. All had been Scarborough born.
[4] One of two Scarborough casualties of the Great War commemorated on the Oliver’s Mount Memorial with the surname of Lazenby, the second being George’s cousin; 3768 Private John William Lazenby [also incorrectly recorded as ‘Lazemby’]. Born in Scarborough during 1890 John had been the eldest son of Sarah and George Lazenby and had been a pre war Regular Army soldier and veteran of the retreat from Mons. Badly wounded by shrapnel whilst serving in Belgium with ‘B’ Squadron of the 18TH [Queen Mary’s Own] Hussars during the 26TH of November 1914, John had been evacuated to England and had eventually returned to his mother’s home in Scarborough, No.35 Harcourt Avenue, where he had died almost exactly a year later from the effects of his wounds on the 26TH of November 1915. Aged twenty six years at the time of his death, Lazenby had been afforded full military honours funeral, despite this his remains had been interred in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section O, Row 13, Grave 6] in a common, and unmarked grave, which according to Scarborough Corporation does not allow him to qualify for a Commonwealth War Graves headstone to mark his final resting place, due to the grave belonging to all the people interred in the plot. It would appear that the final resting place of Private Lazenby will forever remain unmarked.
[Apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, John William Lazenby’s name is commemorated on the ‘Rood Screen’ Memorial in St James’s Church, located in Seamer Road].
Thursday the twenty seventh of March 1918 has been described as ‘the turning point in the great offensive’. By this time the British had learned and applied the hard lessons of the opening days of the offensive and had found that the German attacks had been more predictable than expected. Also the renowned British doggedness in defence had begun to pay dividends and had actually turned out to be a severe thorn in the side of the Germans, whereby field gun batteries sited in strongly built positions had begun to hold their ground, and well appointed machine guns had had held their fire until their enemy had almost been upon them, when they would pour a murderous fire into the advancing storm troopers, precious casualties Ludendorff could well do without.
In addition Ludendorff’s surviving troops were beginning to feel the effects of almost a week of constant movement and fighting. The Germans were also running out of essential stores such as food, water, and ammunition, nevertheless, still determined to achieve outright victory Ludendorff had continued with the offensive.
South of the Somme on the twenty seventh the German Eighteenth Army had torn into the French defences from Noyon to the River Avre. The French Fifth Corps had nevertheless held its ground throughout the day. However, to the south west of Roye the French Sixth and Second Cavalry Corps had been forced to withdraw thus allowing the enemy to capture the important town of Montdidier. Despite the successes south of the Somme, north of the river the day had been a great disappoint to the Germans and little headway had been made. Nevertheless, it had been in this part of the battlefield that Scarborough had lost yet another of its sons to enemy action; 28945 Private John Darley Denton.
Born in the town during 1885 at No.49 Albemarle Crescent, John had been the only son of Annie and John Darley Denton, a ‘jet worker’, by profession. [1]
A pupil of Scarborough’s Central Board School between the ages of four and thirteen, John had left the Central at the end of the summer term of 1898 to become an errand boy, and eventually a clerk, in the North Street offices of ‘Clarke’s Aerated Water and Bottling Company’.
On the 6TH of June 1905 Denton, and ‘partner’ Ethel Foyson Norton, had become the unmarried parents of a daughter. The girl [born in Scarborough] had eventually been named Marjorie, the trio living with Denton’s parents at the family home in Albemarle Crescent [John Denton and Ethel Norton had eventually married in Suffolk at Mutford Register Office on the 22ND of December 1910].
By the outbreak of war Denton had been the proprietor of a tobacconist’s shop, which had been located in Scarborough at No.40 Huntriss Row. Aged twenty-nine by this time, Denton had not been amongst the hundreds of Scarborough men who had flocked to the town’s makeshift recruiting offices during the autumn of 1914. Neither had he been amongst the hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers who had offered themselves for Kitchener’s so called ‘New Armies’ during the following year. However, faced with the loss of over 634,000 men during 1916, casualties that could not be made up by volunteers alone, the British government had taken the drastic step of introducing conscription during January of that year. At first only single men aged between eighteen and forty-one had been taken during March 1916, nevertheless, a few weeks later these had been followed by married men. Denton had received notice on the first of October 1916 that he would be ‘called up’ for service, duly, on the second of January 1917 he had been ordered to report to Scarborough’s Court House [once located in Castle Road, the site is now occupied by a council car park] where he had been enlisted into the army.
At the time, according to his military record, John Denton had been aged thirty-one years and ten months, and had stood at a height of five feet eleven and a quarter inches. The rudimentary medical examination had also revealed a chest measurement [fully expanded] of thirty-seven inches. Given the medical classification of ‘3b’, John Denton had duly been considered fit enough for ‘general service with the colours or in the Reserve for the period of the war’. [2]
Although John had expressed a preference for service in the Royal Garrison Artillery the idiosyncrasies of the military system had seen him being posted for recruit training at the Guards Depot at Caterham with a view to eventually serving in Britain’s premier infantry unit, the Grenadier Guards.
Nowadays potential recruits into the five guards regiments are provided with the chance of attending a residential week to see whether or not they will like the life of a guardsman. Nearly ninety years earlier Denton had no choices left open to him once he had been allotted to the Grenadier Guards, and had soon left the relative comfort of home, family and friends in Scarborough, for the harsh regime of the Guards Depot located in the heart of Surrey some twenty miles to the south of London.
Once through the big wrought iron gates of Caterham on the Hill Barracks Denton’s life had been drastically changed during the sixteen ensuing weeks of purgatory. Known throughout the Brigade of Guards as ‘the Depot’, the establishment, located, many would say, appropriately, next door to a lunatic asylum on the outskirts of Caterham had been the making or breaking of Guards recruits since its opening in 1877. Ruled by demonic drill instructors, Denton’s day had begun with reveille at 6-30am each morning and had ended at lights out at 10pm, in between his hours consisting of a harassed round of ‘square bashing’, rifle drill, P.E., fatigues, inspections, and spit and polish. [3]
Despite the harsh regime of ‘the Depot’, Denton had survived the course to pass out at the beginning of May 1917. Following a period of leave with his wife and two children in Scarborough [son Eric Bielby had been born on the 7TH of March1916] Denton had joined the 5TH[Reserve] Battalion of the Grenadier Guards at London’s Wellington Barracks, where he had taken part in ceremonial duties in the city until October 1917 when he had been placed in a draft of replacements destined for France. Shortly, after a spell of embarkation leave, he had arrived at Le Havre on the 24TH of the month. Initially posted for training in trench warfare at the Guards Divisional Base Depot at nearby Harfleur, Denton had remained there until the beginning of January 1918, when he had included in a draft of replacements sent to the 1ST Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, which by this time had been serving with the 3RD Guards Brigade of the Guards Division on the Western Front in the Arras Sector of Northern France.
At the beginning of Kaiserschlacht the First Grenadier Guards had recently [22nd of March] moved into billets in the neighbourhood of Mercatel and had played little part in the happenings of the opening day of the offensive. However, on the twenty third of March the battalion had moved into the front line to the north east of Boiry Becquerelle. The following day the Germans had launched an attack across the front of the battalion which had been beaten off by the heavy and accurate fire of the Guards. During the early hours of the next day the battalion had pushed out patrols to locate their enemy and although German troops had been seen moving about on the Henin to Croiselles road, the day had passed quietly. That night the Battalion had received orders to evacuate its positions along with the general British withdrawal, the operation being carried out during the early hours of the 25TH of March.
By the break of day of the next day three companies of the 1ST Battalion [the King’s and No’s 2 and 3] had been positioned to the north east of the village of Boisieux-St-Marc from where, just before dawn, patrols had once again been sent out to find the enemy, which had been found to be ‘advancing in large numbers in artillery formation, and covered by a screen of scouts’… [4]
Nevertheless, despite the apparent threat, the battalion appears to have taken little action, and despite receiving orders for a further withdrawal [which in the end had been cancelled], the night had once again passed without incident.
On Wednesday the 27TH of March, however, the German artillery had unleashed a fearful barrage of the British line to the east of Arras. The preliminary bombardment of an offensive [Operation Mars] launched in the sector the next day, the Battalion’s Commander Lieutenant Colonel Lord Gort would later write of the day happenings in the unit’s ‘War Diary’…‘at 11-20am the enemy started to barrage the line from south of the Brigade frontage as far north as the Cojuel River and at 11-40am the bombardment became heavy on the frontage of the right front company of the battalion, the trench being repeatedly hit. About 12-10pm the fire slackened slightly and the barrage on Boiseux-st –Marc lifted to the western edge. By 1pm the fire died away and no infantry action developed on the battalion front…the afternoon was quiet’…[5]
[One of two 1ST Battalion Grenadier Guardsmen recorded by ‘Soldiers died in the Great War’ as having been killed in action during the twenty seventh of March 1918, the deaths of Private John Denton, and 26149 Private Stanley Edgell had not warranted a mention by Ponsonby, neither had their demise been reported in the Battalion’s ‘War Diary’].
During the night of the twenty seventh the battalion had been relieved in the front line by the 1ST Battalion of the Welsh Guards, the 1ST Grenadiers moving back into the support trenches at Boisleux-au-Mont, presumably taking the unit’s casualties with them. During the following day a burial party from the battalion had taken the remains of their fallen comrades to a burial ground at Ficheux known as Bucqouy Road Cemetery, where Privates Denton and Edgell had been interred alongside each other in Section 4, Row F, Graves 13 and 14 respectively. [6]
Ethel Denton had received word of her husband’s death on Wednesday the 3RD of April 1918[official notification had been issued three days later] in a letter, which had been written by the 1ST Grenadier’s Chaplain some days earlier. The ‘Scarborough Mercury of Friday the 5TH of April had subsequently reported;
’Grenadier Guardsman killed - Information was received at Scarborough on Wednesday that Private E.F. Denton, Grenadier Guards, was killed in action on March 27th. Deceased was 32 years of age, and leaves a widow and one child, carried on the business of a tobacconist in Huntriss Row. He joined the army in January 1917, and was home on leave last October. The chaplain who sent the letter to the deceased’s relatives was killed two hours afterwards’…
[Notice that the above article had incorrectly used the initials of Private Denton’s wife, Edith Foyson Denton. The reference to the deceased soldier being the father of only one child is also incorrect].
Having served for one year and eighty-five days in the army, nothing more regarding the death of Private John Denton had appeared in Scarborough’s newspapers. Another former member of the congregation of Queen Street Methodist Chapel, like Private Fred Stabler, John Denton is amongst the Chapel’s twenty three former members who had lost their lives during the war of 1914-18 who had been commemorated not by the traditional ‘Roll of Honour’, as in other churches, but with a union flag draped ‘Memorial Organ’, which had been unveiled in Queen Street Hall during October 1924 and is in use to the present day [2006].
Following the death of her husband, Ethel Denton had been granted a pension of twenty-five shillings and fivepence per week beginning from the 14TH of October 1918. At the time she had been living in Scarborough at No 173 Dean Road [the home of her father in law], However, despite extensive enquiries the author has been unable to find any information regarding the family’s post war whereabouts. By the end of the war John Denton’s former tobacconist shop had no longer been operating in Huntriss Row, and presumably by the 1920’s Ethel had left the town.
John’s mother had died at the age of fifty-nine on Monday the 9TH of March 1914. Following her death John’s father, variously described in Scarborough’s ‘Trade Directories’ as a ‘jet ornament manufacturer’, ‘jet worker’, and ‘jeweller’, had left Albemarle Crescent to live on the corner of Oakville Avenue, at No.173 Dean Road, where he had passed away at the age of eighty five years on Thursday the 30TH of January 1936. A lifelong Methodist, John’s remains had been interred in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery during the afternoon of Monday the third of February 1936 following a memorial service at Queen Street Central Hall. [7]
On the twenty ninth of March the 1ST Battalion of the Grenadier Guards had relieved the 2ND Scots Guards in the front line at Boisleux-au- Mont, the following day the battalion had suffered a devastating artillery and ‘Minenwerfer’ bombardment accompanied by an intense machine gun barrage which had caused the battalion ‘a terrible time’ and throughout the course of the day had cost the unit over eighty casualties, many of whom had eventually joined their fellow Grenadiers in Bucquoy Road Cemetery.
The day after Private Denton’s death British General Headquarters in France had issued the following statement;
‘Severe fighting took place again yesterday evening and during the night astride the Somme and northwards from Albert to Boyelles.
Repeated attacks were made by the enemy along the valley of the Somme and in the neighbourhood of Beumont Hamel, Puiseux, and Moyennville and were repulsed.
We captured a great number of prisoners and machine guns.
Fighting is continuing on both banks of the Somme.
This morning the enemy opened a heavy bombardment of our defences east of Arras, and an attack is developing in this sector’…
The above communiqué had been included in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Thursday 28TH of March 1918. During that day north of the Somme the Germans had launched the second phase of their Spring Offensive. Codenamed ‘Operation Mars’ the attack had been made ‘to the east of Arras’ on a thirty mile front between Lens in the north and Hendecourt in the south by twenty nine divisions belonging to the Seventeenth Army. This time there had been no fog to cover the German advance, and with a less concentrated bombardment, along with less sophisticated infantry tactics the assault had failed miserably. In addition, the British had by this time, been well prepared for the onslaught and artillery, along with machine gun and small arms fire had mown the enemy troops down in their hundreds as they had come forward.
By the afternoon of the twenty eighth the Germans had sustained massive casualties for precious little gain. Reluctantly Ludendorff had called off the Mars operation, and the follow on ‘Operation Valkyrie’, which had been planned as and ‘exploitation phase’ in the wake of a successful ‘Mars’ operation. Limited fighting had continued for the next three days, and although the Germans had made some progress south of the Somme, in the north none had been made. As a result Ludendorff had called a halt to all operations until the beginning of April.
Although Operation Michael had forced great gaps in the ranks of Fifth Army’s line and had advanced in places up to forty miles, it had been at great cost to the Germans, and for very little, if any, strategic advantage. Although Gough had been sacked, his army had not broken and within a week the Germans had lost over 250,000 men to the British losses of 178,000 [almost half of these were prisoners of war. French losses during the same period are calculated at around 77,000.
The subsequent slaughter of German troops during Operation Mars had in effect signalled the end of ‘Der Kaiserschlacht’ in the Somme and Arras Sectors of France. In spite of the catastrophe Ludendorff had remained adamant that the crushing of British must remain his main target and had therefore made hurried plans to mount yet another offensive, this time in the area of the River Lys and around the much dreaded Ypres Sector to the north.
[1] At the time of the 1901 Census the Denton family had still been residing in Scarborough at No.49 Albemarle Crescent and had consisted of John D., 50 years of age, gold jeweller by profession, born Cayton, North Yorkshire, Ann, 46 years, also born Cayton, Mary A. 25 years, school teacher, and John Darley, 16 years, clerk, both born at Scarborough.
[2] The author wishes to express his gratitude to the late Captain [Retired] D. Mason, Regimental Archivist of the Grenadier Guards, for his assistance in procuring the ‘Record of Service Paper’ of Private John Darley Denton.
[3] The home of the Brigade of Guards until 1960, Caterham, once the largest military establishment in Great Britain, had finally closed its gates to the military during 1990. The site is now [2006] a housing estate known as ‘The village at Caterham on the Hill’.
[4] The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914-1918; Lt Colonel the Right Honourable Sir Frederick Ponsonby; London; Macmillan; 1920.
[5] National Archives dossier; WO/95/1223.
[6] Born at Coleford, Somerset, Stanley had been the twenty-one years old son of Elizabeth and Albert Edgell of ‘Camden House’, Coleford.
[7] John and Annie Denton’s final resting place is located a stones throw from John’s old house at 173 Dean Road, in Section D/Border/Grave 4 of Dean Road Cemetery, alas there is no grave marker commemorating the couple. [173 Dean Road now [2006] appears to be divided into apartments, one of which is curiously named ‘H.M.S. Pengu’ and boasts three penguin figures standing on a ledge on the exterior wall facing the main road].