Neuve Eglise 1918 - World War One (from the book "Neath a Foreign Sky" by Paul Allen)
In Remembrance of:
- Private George Edward Sunley
- Private George Edgar Duggleby
- Private Charles Sydney Chambers
- Private Frederick Ireland
- Leading Torpedoman Alexander Coverdale Hick
- Private Arthur William Marr
Realising the perilous state of affairs confronting the B.E.F. during this period of the Lys Offensive, whilst the men of 50TH Division and the remainder of First Army had been fighting for their lives during the 11TH of April, some miles behind the front line British General Headquarters had issued an extraordinary ‘Order of the day’. Haig, not usually a man of words, had chosen his words carefully: ‘To all ranks of the British Army in France and Flanders’:
‘Three weeks ago today the enemy began his terrific attacks against us on a 50-mile front. His objects are to separate us from the French, to take the Channel ports, and to destroy the British Army.
In spite of throwing already 106 divisions into the battle and enduring the most reckless sacrifice of human life, he has yet made little progress towards his goal. We owe this to the determined fighting and self sacrifice of our troops. Words fail me to express the admiration, which I feel for the splendid resistance offered by all ranks of our army under the most trying circumstances. Many amongst us are now tired. To those I would say that victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest. The French Army is moving rapidly ad in great force to our support. There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment’…
At that precise moment very few of the fighting men had seen very little rest from their ordeal, let alone another order from above. Nevertheless, for those that had read the ‘Special Order of the day’ there had been mixed feelings. Some men had been visibly moved by the Field Marshall’s words, whilst others had derisively asked: ‘where’s the fucking wall anyway’? That same day the British had abandoned Armentieres, the Germans marching in soon afterwards.
On Friday the 12TH of April the Germans had got over the Lys at Merville and had reached to outskirts of the Forest of Nieppe in front of the town of Hazebrouk, however a fierce resistance put up by the British 31ST division had denied both the forest and the town to the enemy. During that day the Germans had also begun a new thrust towards Mount Kemmel in the south of the Ypres Sector. The greatest weight had been thrown at the defences in front of Neuve Eglise [now known as Nieuwkerke].
Before the war an insignificant Belgian village to the north of Armentieres, on the road [today the N331] leading to the town of Kemmel, Neuve Eglise [now called Nieuwkerke], at this crucial stage of the war on the Western Front, had been defended by elements of the 148TH [3RD West Riding] Brigade of the Territorial Force 49TH [West Riding] Division. Consisting of the 1ST/4TH Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry [K.O.Y.L.I] and the 1ST/4TH [Hallamshire] battalion of the York and Lancaster’s, in company with the 2ND Worcesters, the Brigade, in trenches to the north of the village, had been under constant enemy artillery bombardment and enemy infantry harassment throughout the eleventh of April and early the next day the Germans had launched a concentrated infantry attack which had succeeded in forcing an entry into the southern part of the village. Ejected from their positions by this assault, during the early hours of the following day, Saturday the 13TH of April, the West Yorkshiremen together with the Worcesters, had mounted a counter attack ‘with great spirit’, which after a ferocious bout of street fighting, had managed to drive the enemy out of the village and back some 150 yards or more, the K.O.Y.L.I. capturing seventeen German infantrymen in the village Y.M.C.A. in the process.
Two days later the British had abandoned the dearly fought for Passchendaele Ridge. The towns of Bailleul and Wulverghem had also fallen to the Germans. Despite the apparently desperate outlook of the battle in Flanders reinforcements had been on their way and by the 19TH of April a nine-mile long stretch of Second Army’s front in Flanders had been taken over by the French.
Sunday the 21ST of April had been an especially dismal day for the German High Command, and indeed the whole of the German nation. It had been during this day that the darling of the German people, Baron Manfred Albrecht Freiherr Von Richtofen, the famous ‘Red Baron’ had been shot from the skies above the Somme battlefield. Germany’s greatest fighter ace, ‘knight of the air’, and commander of the famous ‘Flying Circus’, Richofen had been credited with the ‘killing’ of at least seventy three Allied aircraft between September 1916 and April 1918, and had reputedly been grievously wounded whilst flying over Morlancourt Ridge, near the Somme river by a single British .303 bullet fired by Canadian flier Lieutenant Wilfred ‘Wop’ May who had been perusing the Baron at the time in a Sopwith Camel belonging to 209 Squadron Royal Air Force. Other theories suggest that the fatal shot had come from the muzzle of Australian machine gunner: Sergeant Cedric Popkin’s Lewis Gun fired which had been fired from the ground. Buried by the British in a cemetery near the village of Bertangles, near Amiens, on the 22ND of April, the death of the twenty six years old believed invincible flyer had been an immense blow to German morale, a blow from which they had never really recovered.
The day after the death of the ‘Red Baron’ Scarborough had lost thirty-three years old; 204285 Private George Edward Sunley.
Born in Scarborough, in Theatre Yard, St Thomas Street, during 1885, George had been the eldest son of Alice and Edward Sunley, a ‘coachman’, who by 1918 had been residing in the town at No.57 Durham Street. [1]
Another pupil of Scarborough’s Central Board School, George had left the establishment the age of thirteen at the end of the summer term of 1896, to become an apprentice confectioner with local baker and confectioners Bentley & Edmondson, their shop during this period being located at No’s 61-63 Castle Road.
A qualified confectioner by 1911 [by this time George had been living with his parents at No.30 Sandringham Street], Sunley had been married at St Mary’s Parish Church during December of that year to Annie, the twenty eight years old Keighley born eldest daughter of Margaret and Edwin Newiss, a ‘wholesale fruiterer, who had been residing at No.7 St Helen’s Square.
By the outbreak of war George and Annie Sunley at No.112 Moorland Road, where their son, Joseph, had been born early in 1914. Aged twenty nine by this time, George had resisted joining Britain’s armed forces on the wings of the patriotic fervour which had ran riot throughout the country during the early stages of hostilities. He had instead opted to move his family to London, where they had resided in West Ham, where their second son, Ted, had been born during November 1915.
During October 1916, shortly after the birth of his third son, George William [born at Scarborough], George had enlisted into the Territorial Force at East Ham, Essex, to train with the 2ND/4TH Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment, a so-called ‘Second Line’ infantry battalion that in turn had been attached to the 187TH
[2/3RD West Riding] Brigade of the 62ND [2ND West Riding] Division. Initially a reserve unit, this formation had remained in training in Britain until the beginning of 1917 when the formation had crossed over the Channel to France to concentrate on the Western Front by the 18TH of January 1917.
A veteran of eighteen months of trench life and various operations on the Western Front, Sunley had taken part in operations including those on the Ancre during the winter/spring of 1916/17, [the formation taking part in the capture of Irles on the 10TH of March 1917] and the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line [14TH march-5TH of April 1917]. During the subsequent operations at Cambrai at the end of November 1917, on the opening day of the offensive [20TH of November] he, and the remainder of 62ND Division had advanced further than any British infantrymen that day having fiercely fought their way through, and eventually out of the ruins of Havrincourt, up to, and through, the equally devastated village of Graincourt. By the fall of night that day the exhausted men of the Division had been within sight of the village of Anneux, by which time they had covered a distance of almost five miles [this advance had later been claimed as a record for troops in battle].
Although the 2ND/4TH York and Lancasters had played little part in the Lys Offensive, having been held in Divisional reserve in the Bucquoy Sector of Picardy, a sector which Bond describes as having been ‘comparatively quiet’ during April and May 1918. Nevertheless, as we all know by now, nowhere in the immediate area of the Western Front had been safe from enemy artillery fire or sniper fire. A victim of shellfire, Private Sunley is officially recorded as having been killed in action on Monday the 22ND of April. The news of George’s death had obviously initially been sent to his widow; nevertheless, by mid May the tidings had spread to his parents in Scarborough. Soon afterwards, on Friday the 17TH of May 1918, the fate of the soldier had been reported in a casualty list, which had appeared in that day’s ‘Scarborough Mercury’
‘Killed in action - Information has been received of the death in action of Private G.E. Sunley, York and Lancaster Regiment, a former Scarborough confectioner, and whose wife is a daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Newiss, St Helen’s Square [who have four sons and two sons-in-law still serving]. Private Sunley joined at Mansfield, Notts, in October 1916, and went to France in December 1916. He was killed on April 21ST, Private Sunley, who was aged 33, was the son of Mr and Mrs Sunley, 57 Durham Street. He leaves a widow and three children, the oldest of which is not four years of age’…
[Although the above report says Sunley had enlisted at Mansfield, the author has been unable to find any information to support this theory. ‘Soldiers died in the Great War’ records he had enlisted at ‘East Ham, Essex’].
Initially buried in a battlefield grave near to where he had lost his life, at the end of the war his remains had been exhumed to been taken to the nearby village of Hebuterne were they had been interred in the newly created ‘Gommecourt British Cemetery No.2’. Located on the D6 road between the village of Gommecourt [located some 19 kilometres to the south west of Arras] and Puisieux, this cemetery, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, now contains the graves of 1,357 casualties of the Great War [682 of which are unidentified], George Sunley’s final resting place is located in Section 5, Row H, grave 2.
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, George’s name is included on the Parish ‘Roll of Honour’, located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church located in the town’s Castle Road. His name can also be found on a small gravestone in Dean Road Cemetery [Section B, Row16, Grave 21], which also commemorates the name of his parents, Scarborough born Alice Sunley who had passed away at the age of fifty-nine years at her home at No.57 Durham Street, on Wednesday the 28TH of August 1918. Malton born Edward Sunley had subsequently died on Thursday the 15TH of April 1921 at the age of 67 years. This memorial also commemorates the Sunley’s eldest daughter Jenny, who had died at the age of forty-three years [also at No. 57 Durham Street] during Tuesday the 26TH of March 1929[buried in the plot in Dean Road Cemetery during the afternoon of Saturday the 31ST of March 1929].
[George’s younger brother [born 1891] John Frank Sunley, a former gardener in the Westwood nurseries of Scarborough florist’s Walshaw & Sons, had served as a Private [Regimental Number 44430] in the Machine Gun Corps during the war. Despite being hospitalised on three occasions due to ‘fever’ contracted during the operations in Salonika [Greece], Frank had returned to Scarborough to live for many years with wife Elsie, at No.23 Belle Vue Street].
[1] Edward Sunley and Alice Riby had been married in Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church on the 7TH f February 1883. By the time of the 1901 Census they had been residing in Scarborough at No.37 Durham Street. The family had consisted of; Edward, 47 years, employed as a ‘groom’, born Malton, North Yorkshire, Alice, 42 years, George, 17 years, Jenny, 15 years, employed as a ‘dressmaker’, John Frank, 10 years, and Jessie, aged 3 years, all of whom had been born in Scarborough.
The day after George Sunley’s death, Tuesday the 23RD of April 1918, by coincidence St George’s Day, a mixed bag of volunteer sailors and Royal Marines had been landed on the mole at Zeebrugge from the shell and machine gun fire ravaged deck of H.M.S. Vindictive in an operation that had been formulated with the objective of sealing the entrance to the canal leading to Brugge, an important gateway to the North Sea for the large U-Boat force which had been based there. Although only partially successful, having failed to close the entrance to the U-boat pens, the operation at Zeebrugge had nonetheless been an immense morale boost for the people of Britain in that dire moment in time. [1]
Whilst the matelots and ‘boot necks’ had been fighting for their very existence at Zeebrugge, not so far along the coast, in a Canadian military hospital located close to the French town of Etaples, a nineteen years old soldier from Scarborough had also been fighting to stay alive. Sadly, despite all efforts, the youngster had died later that night. Born in Falsgrave, Scarborough during 1899 at No.29 Commercial Street; 38823 Private George Edgar Duggleby had been the youngest son of Ann and Ernest Lamplough W. Duggleby, who for many years had owned a butchers shop located in the town at No.57 Gladstone Road. [2]
A pupil of Miss Julia Pritchard’s Infant, and eventually the redoubtable Mr William Drummond’s Junior Departments of Gladstone Road School, George had remained at ‘Glaggo Road’ until the age of thirteen when he had left at the end of the summer term of 1912 to begin employment in the family business, which by this time had located at No.8 Gladstone Road, which, although still trading under the name of Ernest Duggleby, had been and managed by his widowed mother, Ernest having died at the age of forty nine during Wednesday the 14TH of April 1909 [A prominent member of Gladstone Road Primitive Methodist Chapel, the remains of Ernest Duggleby had been interred in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery during the afternoon of Saturday the 17TH of April 1909.
George had enlisted into the Training Reserve [Regimental Number 82596] of the British Army at Scarborough during October 1917, and had trained at Rugeley Camp, Staffordshire, with the 11TH Training Reserve Battalion of the King’s Own [Yorkshire Light Infantry] until January 1918, when he had been included in a large draft of replacements destined for service on the Western Front with the various Battalions of the K.O.Y.L.I.. Initially sent to one of the many notorious infantry training camps located near Etaples [known to the Tommies as ‘Eat Apples’] for an intensive course of battle training before being shipped off to the front, Duggelby had eventually been posted to the 2ND Battalion of the K.O.Y.L.I., a pre war regular army formation which had been serving at the time with the 97TH Infantry Brigade of the 32ND Division.
Badly mauled during the recently ended [November 1917]‘Third Wipers’, especially during the attack and eventual capture of an enemy position known as ‘Ten Tree Alley’ [Beaumont Hamel], and subsequently the capture of Savy, the occupation of Holnon Wood, and the taking of La Fayet, by the beginning of 1918 2ND K.O.Y.L.I. had been resting and training in Flanders, near Zouafques, where during mid January Duggleby had joined the unit amongst a large contingent of replacements, including sixteen officers. The unit had remained in this area until the 25TH of January when the formation had moved to the Nordhoek area, and two days later to the front line near Het Sas, a village in the Houthulst Forest Sector of Flanders. Bond describes;
‘The forest which covered an area of over 6,000 acres, was still in enemy hands; it clothed the rising ground forming the northern tip of the crescent of high ground which encircles Ypres. The approaches to it from the west and south were over the low lying swampy country where the mud was deeper and softer than any part in the line, and where men, floundering by night, were accustomed to wrapping their Lewis guns and rifles in strips of flannel to save the barrels and sights from becoming choked if they slipped in the mud’… [3]
On the fourth of February, Duggelby had gone into the front line for the first time. The conditions facing the young soldier are described by Bond;
‘The night was moonless and very dark, making the duckboard track hard to distinguish…The ground was very wet and pitted with shell holes; in the hours of darkness the men were at work on improving the position…the landscape was frequently lit up at night by the enemy’s Very Lights which were followed by bursts of machine gun fire…[3]
The 2ND K.O.Y.L.I. had remained in these positions until the 21ST of March, the opening day of ‘Operation Michael’, when the formation ad moved to ‘Baboon Camp, on the Yser Canal. However, shortly after this move the Battalion had received fresh orders for the unit to move to the Arras Sector of France, where the unit were to reinforce the right flank of Third Army. By the 27TH of march the battalion had reached the village of Lattre St. Quentin, located seven miles to the west of Arras, that same night the formation had marched, via the villages of Beaumetz and Ransart, to the hamlet of Adinfer, located some twelve miles to the south of the city of Arras. The following day the Second Battalion had been ordered to rest in a line of trenches astride the Ransart-Adinfer road. However, during that same afternoon it had been reported that the enemy had launched an attack on the nearby Adinfer Wood, and soon orders had been received for the Battalion to move up to take positions in the wood to support a Guards Brigade, which had been engaged in heavy fighting in the vicinity.
Soaked by torrential rain, the 2ND K.O.Y.L.I. had spent a wet and uncomfortable night in Adinfer Wood, the men making the best of a bad job. In the event, the battalion had never been called into action, the men spending the next ten days in these positions, the Yorkshire men alternating with the Guards to take a turn in the nearby front line trenches.
During the eighth of April 2ND K.O.Y.L.I.’s positions had been subjected to an intense enemy artillery bombardment. Amongst their High Explosive rounds the Germans had thrown in many gas shells, which had been filled with their newly formulated Mustard Gas. Designed to harass rather than kill, to the chemist Mustard had been a mix of ethylene in a solution of sodium chloride, to the soldiers it would become known as an oily brown liquid with a look of sherry, with a smell of onions, garlic, and even radishes. Unlike its predecessors, Chlorine, and Phosgene, Mustard had presented a new concept in gas warfare whereby the effects of the gas would not be felt straight away. Without sunlight, and if the soil was dry the stuff would evaporate slowly to lie dormant for days waiting for its unsuspecting victim like ‘a self cocking man trap’.
Once inhaled, the effects of Mustard had been dreadful. Winter describes;
‘The effects of the gas would be felt only two or three hours after exposure. Sneezing and copious mucus would develop as if a dose of flu were on the way. Then the eyelids would swell and close, with an accompanying sensation of burning in the throat. Where bare skin had been exposed, moist red patches just as in scarlet fever grew, the patches becoming massive blisters within twenty-four hours. Thereafter there would arrive severe headaches, rise in pulse rate and temperature, pneumonia. All this would follow from exposure to just one part of the gas in ten million parts of air’…[4]
Winter’s description is reinforced by Bond, who describes…’the enemy were apparently testing as new gas. By noon the casualties from shellfire were 1officer, 57 other ranks. About 2pm many men went sick, a symptom of their complaint being closure of the eyes accompanied by intense pain; by 6pm a large number had to be sent to hospital and many others struggled on at duty in great pain throughout the night’…[3]
The shelling had continued the next day, the K.O.Y.L.I.’s position once again being subjected to an intense bombardment of Mustard gas, which had caused so many casualties that by the night of the 10TH of April the remaining officers and men had been relieved from the line to retire to ‘Rabbit Wood’, where ‘infected clothes were handed in and exchanged, and men bathed and purified themselves as far as they were able’…[3]
Amongst the ‘large number’ of men from 2ND K.O.Y.L.I. who had been evacuated to hospital, George Duggleby had been amongst four hundred and six casualties to be admitted into No.7 Canadian General Hospital, located on the outskirts of Etaples. George’s mother had been informed that he had been gassed and had been a patient in hospital by mid April 1918, the news being included in a casualty list that had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 19TH of April;
‘Gassed - News has been received that Private G.E. Duggleby, youngest son of Mrs. Duggleby, Gladstone Road, has been gassed, and has been admitted into a Canadian Hospital in France. He went out at the beginning of the year with K.O.Y.L.I.. Another son has been on active service two years’…
No further news regarding the fate of the young soldier had appeared in the local press until two weeks later, by which time, Private Duggleby’s condition had deteriorated. The ‘Mercury’ of Friday the 26TH of April had reported;
‘Dangerously ill - Mrs. Duggleby, 8 Gladstone Road, whose youngest son, Private G.E. Duggleby, was gassed a fortnight ago, has received a telegram to say he is dangerously ill in a hospital in France. Permission to visit him cannot be granted. He is nineteen years of age’…
In many cases, where a soldier in hospitals in France it had been possible for relatives to visit their loved ones. A reason why Ann Duggleby had not been allowed to visit her dying son may be found in an account made by Nurse Florence Evelyn Millard of the British Red Cross Society, concerning the frightful plight of those affected by Mustard gas;
‘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 eaten away by gas and their bodies covered in first degree burns. We try to relieve them by pouring oil on them. They cannot be bandaged or touched. We cover them with a tent of propped up sheets. Gas burns must be agonising because usually 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 layer of his skin burnt from face to body. I gave him an injection of morphine. He was wheeled out just before I came on duty. Where will it end?’… [4]
In some circles described as a ‘’humane weapon’, Mustard had reportedly only killed two per cent of its victims, usually from secondary infections such as pneumonia. Nineteen years old George Duggleby had thankfully succumbed to his condition during the night of Tuesday the 23RD of April 1918, the news of his demise appearing in a casualty list included in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 3RD of May 1918.
Amongst seventy six casualties to die at the 7TH Canadian General Hospital during April 1918, the remains of George Duggleby had been taken to the military cemetery located on the northern outskirts of Etaples, where the young soldier’s remains had been interred in Section 32, Row B, Grave 7A.
Included on the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, George had been amongst seventy three former pupils of Gladstone Road School [including two female nurses] to lose their lives during the Great War of 1914-18, and George Duggleby’s name can also be found on the school’s ‘Roll of Honour’ which, after nearly ninety years, is still located on a wall in hall in the Junior School. His name can also be found in a secluded corner of Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery, on a now [2006] fallen grave marker, which also commemorates the name of the young soldier’s father and that of his mother, Ann Duggleby, who had died at her home at No.10 Gladstone Road, on Friday the 6TH of May 1932 at the age of seventy six [the remains of Ann Duggleby had been interred into this grave site during Monday the 9TH of May].
[George’s elder brother [born 1897] Joseph, had served during the war as a Private [regimental Number 12133] with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. However, by the time he had been wounded during August 1918, he had been serving as a Private [Regimental Number G.S. 92840] with the Royal Fusiliers. Following hospitalisation in Liverpool Joe had played no further active part in the war].
Located on the northern outskirts of ‘Eat Apples’, on the western side of the D940 road leading to Boulogne, ‘Etaples Military Cemetery’ contains the graves of nearly 11,000 casualties of the Great War [and over a hundred from the 1939-45 war]. Amongst them are:
24/384 Private Charles Sydney Chambers. Born in the village of Seamer, North Yorkshire, Charlie had been the twenty seven years old eldest son of Christina and William Chambers, and had been serving with the 2ND Battalion of the 3RD New Zealand Rifle Brigade during the Somme Offensive when he had been wounded in action on the 25TH of September 1916. Reportedly wounded by shrapnel in his right leg the shell fragment had evidently exited out of Charles’s stomach causing a massive wound from which he had never recovered. Despite numerous operations at a hospital at Etaples, Charles had succumbed to his injuries on the 2ND of October 1916 and is buried in the Cemetery in Section 10, Row E, Grave 12.
34921 Private Frederick Ireland. The only son of Minnie and Henry Ireland, Fred had been born in Scarborough during 1896, and had also been wounded whilst serving in the Somme Offensive. Attached to the 9TH Battalion of the King’s Own [Yorkshire Light Infantry] he had died at Etaples at the age of twenty on Thursday the 19TH of October 1916. Although the son of Harry and Minnie Ireland, Fred had lived for most of his life with his maternal Grandmother, Annie Ireland, at No.11 Elders Street in Scarborough. The remains of Fred Ireland are interred in Plot 12, Row A, Grave 11A at Etaples [Fred’s father, Henry ‘Harry’ Ireland, the son of Christopher and Annie Ireland, had served in the Canadian Army during the war of 1914-18 [Regimental Number 700461]. He had died on the 30TH of November 1918 at the age of thirty nine. His remains had been interred in Canada in Brookside Cemetery, Winnipeg, Manitoba [Grave Reference Mil.211].
[1] An episode of the utmost gallantry, eight Victoria Crosses had eventually been awarded for the operation at Zeebrugge. The cost of these awards had inevitably been expensive. Amongst the seven hundred killed, wounded, and missing had been Scarborough born; J/11442 Leading Torpedoman Alexander Coverdale Hick. The eldest son of Louisa and ‘joiner’ James Coverdale Hick, ‘Alex had served in the Royal Navy since 1911, and had been a veteran of the operations in the Mediterranean and at Gallipoli, where he had served in the destroyer H.M.S. Raccoon. Alex had been a member of the crew of the Blockship, H.M.S. Ipigenia, which had been scuttled in the entrance leading to the U-Boat pens, and despite having been gassed during the ‘naval enterprise’ he had managed to return to England with the surviving members of strike force apparently little the worse for wear. Nevertheless, three days later he had died in Chatham Naval Hospital. Aged twenty three years at the time of his death, Alex Hick, a former pupil of Gladstone Road School, had been buried with full military honours in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery during the afternoon of Tuesday the thirtieth of April 1918. His final resting place in Dean Road Cemetery is marked with a beautifully carved stone that also bears the names of his parents; Scarborough born [1871] Louisa Hick, who had died during 1956, and Hutton Buscel born [also 1871] James Hick who had passed away during 1961. Alex’s two younger brothers George Arthur [born in Scarborough during 1896], and James Cameron [1901] had also served in the Royal Navy during the Great War. Unlike their elder brother, both had survived. The memorial also bear the inscription; ‘Anchored’…
[2] At the time of the 1910 Census the Duggleby family had been residing in Scarborough at No.57 Gladstone Road, and had consisted of Ernest Lamplough W., 41 years of age, ‘butcher’ by profession, born ‘Shardale’ Yorks.??? Ann, 44 years, born Helperthorpe Yorks, Jane Ann, daughter, 11 years, William Ernest, 9years,
Edith Mary, 6 years, Joseph, 4 years, and ‘Edgar George’?, 2 years of age. All the children had been born in Scarborough.
[3] The History of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the 1914-1918 war; Colonel H.C. Bond.
[4] Death’s men; Denis Winter; Penguin Books; 1978.
The day after the death of George Duggleby, Wednesday the twenty fourth of April, at a place not too far from where the young soldier had been gassed, another former pupil of Gladstone Road School had also lost his life. On that occasion, unlike Private Duggleby, with less than a year’s military service under his belt, the former ‘Glaggo Road’ boy had been a veteran of over four years service on the Western Front;
223 Private Arthur William Marr. Born on the 26TH of April 1897 in the North Yorkshire village of Muston, Arthur had been the son of ‘Housemaid’ Lucy Annie Marr, and by the time of the 1901 Census four years old Arthur had been residing in Scarborough with his mother [and ‘lodger’ P.C. Henry Stockdale] at No. 26 Roscoe Street, a stones throw from Gladstone Road School, where he had also been a pupil of the redoubtable Miss Julia Pritchard’s Junior Department. Also a pupil of Mr Drummond’s Junior Department, Arthur had left ‘Glaggo Road’ at the age of thirteen at the end of the Summer Term of 1910 to begin work as an apprenticeship printer with local printing firm F.W. Pinder, which in those days had been located in St Thomas’s Street. [1]
An apprentice to Mr. Pinder for a little over a year, Arthur had opted to enlist into the Grenadier Guards for ‘Short Service’ [a total period of 12 years service, 3 in ‘Army Service’, followed by 9 in the Reserves] at Scarborough’s Burniston Road Cavalry Remount Depot on the 8TH of July 1912. Reportedly aged seventeen years and four months at the time, the rudimentary medical examination had revealed he had stood at five feet eight and a half inches in height, had weighed 133 lbs, and had possessed a ‘fresh’ complexion, blue eyes, and light brown hair. [2]
Initially posted for training to the Guards Depot located at Caterham, in Surrey, Arthur had arrived at the dreaded Depot on the 12TH of July 1912. Known throughout the Brigade of Guards as ‘little Sparta’, whilst at Caterham Arthur had endured the fearful rigours of seemingly endless bouts of ‘square bashing’ [unfortunately the lot of every infantry recruit], P.T., and weapons training coupled with long periods of ‘bulling’ boots, and equipment, all of which had been accompanied by the constant screaming of the all powerful non commissioned instructors, for seventeen weeks. Whilst at Caterham, on the 12TH of September 1912 Arthur had successfully passed the examination entitling him to the army’s 3RD Class Education Certificate, and on the 18TH of October he had also received the Second Class Certificate.
At the end of his training period Marr had been able to fire the obligatory fifteen aimed rounds per minute from his .303 S.M.L.E. rifle and had been deemed fit, and smart enough to join one of the two Grenadier Guards battalions, eventually joining the regiment’s First Battalion at Warley Barracks.
Located near the village of Little Warley [then a part of Romford Rural District] in Essex, the regime at Warley Barracks had offered little in the way of relaxation following the strictness of the Depot. Reveille had been sounded before dawn and in between that and lights out at 8-30pm the men had trained and cleaned equipment, and had sometimes along the way managed to cram in a meal or two.
Life at Warley had nevertheless been interspaced on a regular basis with a tour of duty in London. During these periods Arthur had exchanged his khaki drab uniform for the scarlet tunic and black bearskin [with white plume on the left side] to stand for hours outside ‘Buck House’ [Buckingham Palace], and St James’s Palace, along with tours of duty with the piquet assigned to the patrolling of the Bank of England, located in London’s Threadneedle Street.
At the beginning of August 1914 with the clouds of war rapidly crossing the skies of Europe the Grenadiers, like most British army units during that tumultuous summer, had begun to make plans for war.
Britain had eventually declared the beginning of hostilities with Germany on the fourth of the month, by this time the regiment had consigned its scarlet tunics and bearskins to the regimental stores, the men shortly being issued with live ammunition, a blatant indication for all to see that something big had indeed been in the wind.
During September 1914 the 1ST Grenadier Guards had been assigned to the 20TH Infantry Brigade of Major General Thompson ‘Tommy’ Capper’s 7TH Division, joining the formation at Lyndhurst [located on the edge of Hampshire’s New Forest]. Probably the finest formation of British troops to leave Britain’s shores, the 7TH Division had left Southampton on the 5TH of October 1914 and had landed at Zeebrugge the following day, originally to assist in the defence of Antwerp. However, by this time the city had fallen into German hands and the formation had subsequently been ordered to defend certain important bridges and other places that would assist the westward withdrawal of the defeated Belgium army. Once the Belgians had passed through the British line 7TH Division [by this time attached to Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Corps] had also moved westwards to dig the first trenches in front of the soon to become dreaded town of Ypres.
Involved in the First Battle of Ypres, Private Marr had seen many of his pre war comrades killed and wounded in the defence of the god forsaken and soon to be much fought over city of ‘Wipers’, so much so that by the end of October 1914, 1ST Grenadiers had almost ceased to exist having lost over seven hundred officers and men, the Battalion by this time consisting of just four officers and one hundred men [between the 14TH of October and 30TH of November the 7TH Division had suffered over 9,800 casualties. The total B.E.F. casualties had been around 86,000 killed, wounded, and missing].
Extremely fortunate to have survived ‘First Wipers’ unscathed, Marr had subsequently taken part in the British Expeditionary Force’s first offensive of the war, the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. An ill prepared operation that had been mounted at the behest of the French C in C, Joffre, who had insisted that the British had taken a more active part in the war in France. The battle of Neuve Chappelle had been launched early on the 10TH of March 1915, in the wake of a concentrated artillery bombardment [the heaviest of the war thus far], and although captured during the ensuing three days of fighting, the British First Army had suffered over fifteen thousand casualties.
Amongst the many hundreds of men who had been wounded during the first day’s fighting at Neuve Chapelle, Marr, wounded by a bullet which had passed through his right arm, had eventually been shipped back to England for treatment. Following hospitalisation at Gosport War Hospital, Hampshire, and a period of home leave, he had been posted to the 4TH[Reserve] Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, which had been stationed in London’s Chelsea Barracks. The destination of the majority of the regiment’s wartime recruits [over 25,000 men had passed through the unit by the end of the war]; the Fifth Battalion had also been the unit where recovered wounded and sick men such as Marr had ‘trained’ before being returned to the front and their respective battalions. Whilst with this unit Arthur had trained as a machine gunner. Initially he had specialised with the Maxim Machine Gun, the British Army’s standard pre war machine gun, however, during the early months of 1915 the army had begun to receive a newer weapon [introduced on a small scale during 1912] and Marr had been introduced to the magnificent ‘Gun, Machine, Vickers .303 Inch Mark 1’. Better known as the ‘Vickers Heavy Machine Gun’, this weapon, firing around five hundred rounds per minute, had soon earned the nickname of ‘the Queen of the battlefield’ and would remain in British use for over five decades.
Marr had eventually rejoined the First Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in France during January 1916. By this time the Battalion had joined the newly created [August 1915] Guards Division, the unit being a part of the 3RD Guards Brigade.
Attached to 3RD Guards Brigade Machine Gun Company [Commanded by Viscount Bury of the Scots Guards] Arthur had taken part in the Somme Offensive of 1916, his six man gun team helping to provide the massive machine gun fire which had provided covering fire for the Guards Division’s operations during the Battle of Flers/Courcelette [15-22 September], and the subsequent Battle of Morval [25-28 September], during which the Guards Division had captured the village of Lesbouefs.
The terrible winter of 1916/17 had followed the closing down of the Somme Offensive during November 1916, Marr and his fellow guardsmen being forced to endure appalling conditions in the trenches during this period, the only consolation Arthur had received during this dismal period of his military career had arrived on the sixth of December 1916 when he had been promoted to the exalted rank of Lance Corporal.
On the 16TH of April 1917 the existing four Guards Machine Gun Companies had been grouped together to form a single Battalion known as the ‘Machine Gun Guards’. Amongst the first five hundred men to join the new unit [Regimental Number 223] at this time Arthur had replaced his flaming grenade cap badge of the famous Grenadier Guards for that of the less familiar five pointed star [each point consisting of a bullet, and representing the five regiments of Foot Guards] of the newly created unit.
Sent to England for training at the Guards Machine Gun Training Centre at Epsom, during April 1917, Arthur had returned to his unit in time to take his place in the Third Battle of Ypres, where on the opening day of the offensive [31ST of July] the Guards Division had been involved in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge. Once again the Guards had taken heavy casualties during the ensuing two days of fighting and Arthur had again been fortunate not to be amongst the formation’s huge casualty list. He had also survived the subsequent operations, which had been labelled The Battle of the Menin Road [20-25 September], and the Battle of Poelcapelle [9 October]. Utterly exhausted by mid October, the Guards Division had nonetheless taken part in the First Battle of Passchendaele, which had taken place on the 12th of October. Thankfully this had been the last operation of the dreadful ‘Third Wipers’ operation, which had killed or maimed over a quarter of a million British and Commonwealth servicemen. [3]
On the twentieth of November 1917 the British had launched the initially successful operation designed to seize the town of Cambrai. Inevitably the Guards Division had become embroiled in the offensive, and Arthur Marr had been amongst the machine gunners who had provided the covering fire during the snow filled night of the 29TH of November 1917, for the Guardsmen of 2ND Guards Brigade who had taken part in the ill fated ‘Battle of Fontaine Notre Dame, which had resulted in the death of fellow Scarborian, Private John Wright [Lancaster]. [4]
At the beginning of March 1918 the Machine Gun Guards had been renamed the 4TH [Foot Guards] Battalion, Machine Gun Guards. At the time the Guards Division had bee attached to Third Army in the Arras Sector, in trenches near to the village of Roeux, where Arthur had spent another bitter winter. [5]
On the 21ST of March, at the start of the German Spring Offensive, being in the Arras Sector the Guards had initially been unaffected by the enemy onslaught. However, as the situation had begun to deteriorate in the face of heavy German attacks the Guards had inevitably been drawn into the battle. Involved in heavy fighting to the south east of the village of Mercatel during the 28TH of March, Headlam has this to say of the 3RD Guards Brigade;
‘The troops of 3RD Division were forced back to the ‘Army Line’ defences running behind the Arras—Bapaume road south east of Mercatel. A company of the 1ST Welsh Guards on the extreme left of 3RD Guards Brigade front was vigorously attacked by the advancing Germans. It drove them back with its Lewis Gun and rifle fire, and, later in the evening, the battalion by refusing its left was successful in keeping intact the junction between the guards and the 3RD Division
Throughout the day the majority of the Guards machine guns were employed in the front line, it being found impossible—even had time and materials been available—to site concealed positions in rear as the line lay on a forward slope. The guns being in action almost continually, and, in consequence, were easily located by the enemy, who succeeded in damaging four of them. The casualties in the machine gun companies up to this date amounted to nearly 50 of the personnel, and, as all available reinforcements were now up in the line, it was becoming a matter of some difficulty to man the guns’…[6]
Despite the bitter fighting and determined assaults by wave after wave of enemy infantry, the guards had held on to their positions, albeit at a price. Relieved at the end of ten days of heavy fighting, the ‘somewhat ragged and woebegone’ Guards Division had by this time lost fifty nine of its officers and over one thousand other ranks
[of these Machine Guards had lost 8 officers and 82 men].
At the start of the operations on the Lys the Guards had still been in the positions they had held throughout March, however, on the 13TH Of April the whole of the Guards Division had been relieved from the line to spend ten restful days in Third Army reserve. With the rest of the division quartered around the villages of Bavincourt, and Saulty, Arthur, and the remainder of 3RD M.G. Company had been billeted in a tiny hamlet called Barly, where he had spent the last few days of his life resting and refitting, before going back into the line [with the remainder of the Guards Division] during the reportedly very wet Tuesday the 24TH of April, just two days before his twenty second birthday.
The positions held by the Guards Division had been located near to the village of Ayette and had consisted of ‘a series of posts with short lengths of support and reserve trenches in rear’, running between a fortified farm known as ‘Quesnoy Farm’, and an old German trench which had ran west of the farm and south east of Adinfer Wood.
Headlam makes no mention of the Guards having taken part in any significant actions between the 24TH and 26TH of April 1918, merely recording for this period…’Although the weather was wet at the end of April, and the ground in consequence very heavy, all the battalions in the line displayed great energy in patrolling and several prisoners were taken’… With this in mind it can therefore only be assumed that Arthur Marr had not gone out, as one would have imagined, in a blaze of glory befitting a veteran soldier who had honourably served King and Country for five years and two hundred and ninety eight days of his life had become just another casualties, often referred to in official communiqués as ‘usual wastages’, who had daily died in their hundreds in France and Belgium as a result of enemy action, usually shellfire or the sniper’s bullet.
Amongst nineteen officers and four hundred and sixty four ‘other ranks’ of the Guards Division who had become casualties during April 1918, the news of Private Marr’s death had initially been transmitted to the Guards Machine Gun Regiment Headquarters in London. Soon afterwards the official buff containing the always-dreaded telegram had been sent to the soldier’s next of kin. Although originally recorded as Arthur’s N.O.K., his mother, Lucy Ann Marr had died during 1917 at the age of fifty four, leaving elder brother, Robert Marr, to receive the news of her beloved son’s loss during May 1918. The tidings had been included in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 3RD of the month:
‘Grenadier Guard killed - Mr. and Mrs. Marr, farmer, Irton, have received a letter from an officer stating that their nephew, Private A. Marr, a machine gunner in the Grenadier Guards, was killed on April 24TH. Private Marr, who was a regular soldier, has been in France since September 1914 and was wounded at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. He would have been 22 on April 26TH. He was formerly employed with Mr Pindar, printer, and lived at 15 Roscoe Street’…[7]
There had been no further news in Scarborough’s local press regarding the demise of Arthur Marr.
Two other men belonging to the Guards Machine Gun Regiment had lost their lives at the same time as Arthur. Leeds born 1899 Private George Thompson [formerly 16033 Coldstream Guards] had been killed in action on the same day, whilst during the following day 1177 Lance Sergeant [the Guards equivalent of Corporal] John Reilly [formerly 4359 Irish Guards] had died from wounds received on the twenty fourth. The remains of all three machine gunners had been taken to a burial ground near to the village of Bienvillers, located 18 kilometres to the south west of Arras, where those of Private Marr had been interred in Section 8, Row C, Grave 11, whilst those of Corporal Reilly and Private Thompson had been buried in Section 17, B, Grave 4, and Section 1, A, 47, respectively [why they had not been buried together is not known]. This cemetery, now known as Bienvillers Military Cemetery, is located just beyond Bienvillers on the side of the D 2 road leading to the village of Souastre and contains the graves of over one thousand five hundred casualties of the Great War [400 of which are unidentified burials]. During a recent visit during August 2006 the author had found Arthur Marr’s grave marker to be considerably faded by the elements.
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial Arthur’s name is also amongst the ‘bunch of names’ commemorated on the Gladstone Road School ‘Roll of Honour’ [a poor photographic reproduction of Private Marr is also included in; ‘A thousand faces’, a locally produced book which celebrates the millennium at the schools in Gladstone Road].
In the village of his birth, Arthur’s name is commemorated on a Roll of Honour inside All Saints Church at Muston [this memorial also includes the name of John Robert Marr who had served as a Driver [Regimental Number T4/160070] with the Army Service Corps throughout the war and had survived].
The daughter of Lucy and John Marr [once the ‘Inn Keeper’ of Muston’s Ship Inn] Arthur’s mother, Lucy Annie Marr, had been born at Muston during 1860 and had died in Scarborough Infirmary on Monday the 16TH of July 1917 at the age of fifty six years. Her last recorded address, according to the records of the Commonwealth War Grave Commission, had been ‘Argham Grange, Grindale, Bridlington, Yorkshire’. Whether Annie had been working as a domestic servant or had been residing at this address is not known. Subsequently buried in All Saints churchyard at Muston, Annie’s grave marker includes an inscription dedicated to her beloved Arthur, the son, one feels, she had been very proud of;
…’Also her dearly loved son Arthur William Marr, killed in action April 24TH 1918 aged 21 years and subsequently buried in Bienvillers Military Cemetery, France.
Not lost to memory or to love, but gone to our father above’…
[1] Baptised in All Saints Church at Muston on the 12TH of August 1860, Lucy Ann had been the youngest daughter of Lucy and ‘farm labourer’ John Marr. By the time of the 1891 Census she had been working in Scarborough as a ‘servant’ at No.9 St Martin’s Square for Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Shaw, a ‘mast and block maker’ [whose workshop had been located in Scarborough’s ‘Sandside’]. Arthur’s birth certificate does not contain the name of his father.
[2] Extracted from a copy of Arthur Marr’s Service Record, which has graciously been supplied to the author by Captain [retired] D. Mason, the Grenadier Guards Regimental Archivist, R.H.Q. Grenadier Guards, Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London.
[3] During these operations, on the 9TH of September 1917, Lance Corporal Marr had reverted, at his own request, to the rank of Private. A more detailed account of these operations can be found in the previous chapter dealing with ‘Third Wipers’.
[4] Scarborough born Private John Wright had served with the 3RD Battalion of the Grenadier Guards during the battle of Fontaine. He had died at the age of twenty-one from the effects of wounds received in action on the 3RD of December 1918. A full account of the battle of Fontaine Notre Dame is included in the chapter dealing with the Battle of Cambrai.
[5] Shortly after Arthur Marr’s death, on the 10TH of May 1918, his former unit had been merged into the Guards Machine Gun Regiment, which had been formed on that date by Royal Warrant. This regiment had initially consisted of 70 officers and 1,051 other ranks, and had been composed of five battalions, the 1ST[1ST Life Guards], 2ND [2ND Life Guards], 3RD [Royal Horse Guards], 4TH [Foot Guards], and 5TH [Reserve] Battalion. The regiment had continued to serve with distinction with the Guards Division throughout the remainder of the war to serve in the British peacetime army until March/April 1920, when the formation had been disbanded.
[6] History of the Guards Division in the Great War, 1915-1918; Volume 2; Cuthbert Headlam, D.S.O. Murray; London; 1924.
[7] Six months after the death of their nephew, Robert and Lucy Marr had also lost their youngest son to the war. 32417 Corporal James Marr had died at the age of thirty from wounds received in action, at No.5 General Hospital at Rouen, on the 21ST of October 1918. The husband of Rose Marr, of Irton, Jim had been wounded in both legs and arms whilst serving with the 1ST Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment and had reputedly lain for three days on the battlefield before being rescued by stretcher-bearers. Formerly employed in Scarborough, prior to the outbreak of war Jim had been living and working in Leeds [where he had also enlisted] for wool merchants Messrs Bainbridge & Brown. The remains of James Marr are interred in St Sever Cemetery Extension at Rouen [Grave Reference S. 2. W. 5.]. Corporal Marr is also commemorated on a gravestone in the yard of St Martin’s Church at Seamer, which also includes the name of Jim and Rose’s son, Robert Abel Marr, who had died at the age of nine months on the 9TH of December 1916.