The last campaign of the Great War (from the book "Neath a Foreign Sky" by Paul Allen)
R.I.P
- Corporal Frederick George Philp
- Private Walter Leonard Sowersby
- Lance Corporal John William Patrick
- Lance Corporal Albert Victor Pattrick
- Private George Douglas Pattrick
- Private Stanley Clark Redman
- Private Richard Michael Fitzpatrick
- Private John William Warwick
- Lance Corporal William George Duck
- Private James Wheater Gilbert Raper
- Private Robert Allan Medd
The same day that Tom Kelly had died, to the south in the Somme Sector, units of the Australian Corps, in drizzling rain, had battered their way into the town of Peronne. Desperate fighting had taken place throughout the day, the Australians beating off five successive enemy counter attacks and had inflicted fearful losses on the various German army units, including a Prussian Guards division that had been ordered to hold Peronne at all costs. By nightfall the majority of the town had been firmly in the grasp of the ‘Aussies’. Another display of the utmost courage and determination that the Australians had been renowned for throughout the Great War, The capture of Peronne had seen two Diggers being subsequently awarded with the Victoria Cross,
Corporal Alexander Henry Buckley [53RD Battalion] posthumously rewarded for ‘most conspicuous gallantry and self sacrifice’, and Private William Matthew Currey [54TH Battalion], for ‘most conspicuous gallantry and daring’.
On Monday the 2ND of September, First Army had launched its long awaited assault on the Droncourt-Queant Line. Running between Neuville Vitasse [about thee miles to the south east of Arras] and Queant, thence to Drocourt, the ‘D-Q Switch’ had been Constructed during 1916 as part of northern extension of the Hindenburg Line, and had not been a line as such, but a defensive zone consisting of a front and support defensive system, each consisting of two lines of trenches each provided with concrete shelters and many machine gun posts, the whole protected by immense fields of barbed wire.
The task of assaulting this fortress had, inevitably, been handed to the Canadian Corps. Considered as the finest fighting unit on the Western Front by this time, the Corps had fielded the 1ST and 4TH Divisions for the operation, along with the British 4TH Division. Zero Hour had been set for 5am, and initially the Canadians had met little resistance, the garrison of the ‘D-Q Line’ in most areas choosing to surrender on masse rather than fight. However, having captured the first two lines of defence the Canadians had continued their advance towards the support system where they had, for a time, come under heavy machine gun fire. This resistance had eventually been subdued, the Canadians continuing their advance as far as a position known as ‘Buissy Switch’, where, once again they had come under intense machine gun fire. Vicious fighting had continued throughout the remainder of that day. Elsewhere, however, resistance had been light, especially in the northern sector, where many Germans had surrendered, and by the fall of night the Canadians had advanced as far as the village of Dury.
At dawn on the third of September various Canadian patrols had found that the Germans had abandoned their positions all along the Canadian front under the cover of darkness. The assault had now become a task of perusing a retreating enemy. That day the British 4TH Division had marched into Etaing, thus allowing the Canadian Corps to advance as far as the high ground overlooking the Canal du Nord, where the enemy had at last met them with their customary intense artillery and machine gun fire.
Between the 21ST of August and the 3RD of September the First and Third Armies had extended the attack that had been begun by Fourth Army on the 8TH of August. The latter had advanced seven miles on its right and fourteen on its left, whilst the Third and First had moved forward some fifteen and twelve miles respectively.
At home interest in those crucial and exciting days of September 1918 had inevitably promoted large sales of newspapers. Eager for news of the war in France people had bought newspapers in droves to read of the latest exploits of the British Expeditionary Force that the public had been led to believe had been marching towards victory with barely a shot fired. The avid readers of ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 13TH of September had not been disappointed. The newspapers ‘Today’s official’ column had contained the customary communiqué that had been issued by British General Headquarters that morning, that had proudly announced;
‘Still nearer St. Quentin - British shatter counter attack - Great German losses at Havrincourt - Yesterday English troops gained possession of Holnon Wood, driving the enemy from the localities in which he offered resistance.
Further north our line has been advanced to the east of the village of Jeancourt, which is in our hands.
During the evening strong hostile forces assisted by a squadron of low flying German aeroplanes, attacked our new position at Havrincourt and were repulsed with great loss.
Opposite Mouvres hostile infantry assembling for a counter attack were observed and subjected to heavy and accurate fire by our artillery. The attack which developed subsequently was completely unsuccessful, the few Germans who reached our positions being killed, or taken prisoner’…
Whilst the battle had raged on the Somme and to the east of Arras, further to the north the British Second Army, commanded by Sir Herbert Plumer, had mounted its own operations to push forward the British line in the northern sector of the Western Front in order to bring it into line with the general advance that had been made to the south of the Arras –Cambrai road. Amongst the units that had taken part in these operations had been the 15TH/17TH Battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own [West Yorkshire Regiment]. Attached to the 93RD Brigade of 31ST Division, the Battalion had been manning the front line, a series of posts, along the western side of the road between the ruined village of Ploegsteert [known to the Tommies as ‘Plugstreet'] and the equally damaged Messines, and on the 14TH of September the unit’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel W.D. Coles, had received orders from Brigade Headquarters to ‘advance these posts’. This had been carried out during the night of the 15th/16th of September, until, by the morning of Wednesday the 18TH of September, the battalion had formed a semi circle round the eastern outskirts of Ploegsteert.
The battalion’s advance [carried out by ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies] had been opposed by a resolute enemy, nevertheless, with the aid of rifle grenades and Lewis Guns the unit had eventually achieved all its objectives. During these operations, described by Wyrall; ‘as a small affair that had been ‘carried out with great vigour and dash’, by the 18TH of September the 15TH/17TH West Yorkshires had not only ‘advanced its posts’ but had captured an enemy position known as ‘Soyer Farm’, having killed or wounded over sixty of the enemy, and capturing over sixty prisoners. For these gains the Battalion had lost one officer killed [Captain John Marshall] and two others wounded, whilst another twenty-six other ranks had either been killed or wounded. Amongst these casualties had been twenty-seven years old; 19188 Corporal Frederick George Philp.
Born in Scarborough at No.95a Longwestgate on Tuesday the 27TH of October 1891, Fred had been the youngest son of Elizabeth and’ George Richard Philp, who had carried on a business in the ‘bottom end’ of the town as a ‘grocer and baker’, at No. 4 East Sandgate. [2]
A pupil of the East Ward’s St Thomas’s Parish School, and eventually the Friarage Board School, Fred had abandoned the three R’s at the age of thirteen to become involved in the family business, stating out by delivering bread in the close knit neighbourhood, Philp had eventually become a baker in his own right, to work alongside his father until his enlistment into the army [at Scarborough] during April 1915. Initially sent to York’s Fulford Barracks for training with the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment, Philp had remained with this unit until May 1916, when Fred had been posted to the 15TH[Service] Battalion of the regiment.
Known as the ‘1ST Leeds’ the 15TH West Yorks had been raised during September 1914 as a ‘Pals’ Battalion by the Mayor and council of the city of Leeds. Attached to the 93RD Brigade of the 31ST Division the battalion had recently [February] reached the Western Front after serving in Egypt, in No.3 Section of the Suez Canal Defences, and by the time that Philp had joined the unit it had been concentrated south of the Somme around Hallencourt.
On the opening day of the Somme Offensive [1ST July 1916] Philp had taken part in 31ST Division’s ‘baptism of fire’ in a suicidal frontal assault on the village of Serre that had resulted in the virtual annihilation of the various ‘Pals’ battalion that had once been the backbone of the 31ST Division. Wounded during these operations Philp had taken no further active part in the war until the winter of 1916, when the 31ST Division had taken part in the Battle of the Ancre, where, during the first day of these operation Private John Cunningham, of the 12TH Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment had been awarded with the Victoria Cross for his brave conduct whilst taking part in bombing operations on an enemy position in the Hebuterne Sector.
Also involved in 31ST Division’s operation on the Ancre River between February and March 1917, Philp had also taken part in the Arras Offensive of May that year, where near Oppy Wood on the 3RD of May, 2ND Lieutenant John Harrison of the 11TH East Yorkshires had been killed whilst single handily attempting to knock out a machine gun position that had been holding up the advance of his unit. Harrison had subsequently also been awarded with the Victoria Cross for his bravery and self-sacrifice.
Slightly wounded during an abortive trench raid in the Arleux Sector during late September 1917, by Friday the 7TH of December Corporal Philp and the remainder of 15TH West Yorkshires had been recuperating in a ‘rest camp’ in the village of Le Pendu, where during that day he and his comrades had witnessed the amalgamation of his unit with the seven officers, four sergeants, five corporals, and 260 privates belonging to the regiment’s 17TH Battalion, the occasion being celebrated with free beer and a concert by the 15TH‘s brass band.
By the beginning of 1918 Fred Philp had been on leave in Scarborough, where, on the 21ST of January he had been married at St Mary’s Parish Church to Maud Deighton, the thirty three years old Scarborough born youngest daughter of Ellen and William H. Deighton. The couple had subsequently resided in the town at No.8 Aberdeen Terrace, where their only child, Olive, had shortly been born.
All too soon Philp had returned to the war to become involved in the German Spring Offensive that had begun on the 21ST of March1918. On the day that the storm had broken Philp and the remainder of the 15TH/17TH West Yorks had been in positions near to ‘Judas Farm’ near St Leger, however, shortly the battalion had been ordered to join the general British retreat to withdraw to the Boyelles- Ervillers road, and thence to Hamelincourt, where the battalion’s positions had been raked by intense enemy artillery and machine gun fire that had caused many casualties. It had been whilst there that Leeds born; 19/11 Sergeant Albert Mountain had gained a Victoria Cross for a display of ‘most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty’ that had taken place on the 25TH of March 1918.
Fortunate to be amongst the four officers and forty other ranks of the15TH/17TH West Yorkshires that had survived the battalion’s almost total annihilation in fighting around Moyenneville, Philp had been involved in further heavy fighting throughout the remainder of March 1918. During April Philp had taken part in the Battle of Hazebrouck [12TH –15TH April] that had once again seen the 15TH/17TH Battalion in severe fighting near to the village of Meteren that had cost the unit over three hundred casualties.
During June 1918 Fred Philp had returned to Scarborough to enjoy, what was to be, his last spell of home leave. Back at the front by July he had taken part in operations in Northern France to the east of the Forest of Nieppe, where, on the 19TH of July units of the 15TH/18TH had launched an attack on enemy positions to the west of ‘Le Beque Stream’. This assault had been expected by the enemy and had met with the customary German wall of machine gun and artillery fire that had caused over seventy nine casualties amongst the West Yorkshiremen before it had been abandoned, having achieved very little.
The 15TH/17TH West Yorkshire had played little part in the initial stages of the allied advance of August –September 1918. However, during the night of the 12/13TH of September the battalion had moved once more into the support trenches in the Nieppe Sector. The following night the battalion had moved into the series of posts that had constituted the front line along the western side of the Ploegsteert-Messines road preparatory to the launching of the battalion’s operations to ‘advance its posts’ that had been the death of Corporal Philp and twenty six of his comrades.
Married for barely nine months, Maud Philp had received news of her husband’s death during Monday the twenty third of September 1918. Four days later ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the twenty seventh had reported;
‘Corporal’s third wound fatal - News has been received by Mrs Philp, of 8 Aberdeen Terrace, of the death in action of her husband, Corpl. F.G. Philp, West Yorks. The letter from the army chaplain says; ‘He was badly wounded in the leg, and whilst being removed to the ambulance station was shot in the head and killed instantly’. Corpl. Philp has seen much service, joining up in April 1915. He leaves a widow and one child. He was previously a baker on his own account in East Sandgate’…
The same newspaper had also included an epitaph to the fallen corporal in its ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths’ column;
‘Philp—Killed in action, September 18TH 1918. Corporal F.G. Philp, dearly loved husband of Maud Philp. —‘Greater love hath no man’—Also sadly mourned by his sorrowing father, sisters, and brother Ted [in Canada]’.
‘He nobly answered duty’s call, He gave his life for one and all’…
By the time that the above had appeared in ‘The Mercury’ the 15TH/18TH West Yorkshire had been relieved form the line, the unit moving back to a rest area near Bailleul, a large town in Northern France located close to the Belgium border. Having taken their dead and wounded with them, the battalion had duly interred the remains of Corporal Philp, along with those of Lieutenant John Marshall, 18/1428 Sergeant Albert Jowett, 40180 Private Ernest Pearson, Military Medal, 305597 Private William Arthur Jillings, and 64324 Private John George Warner, in the local Cemetery, now known as ‘Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension’. Amongst nearly five thousand casualties of the ‘Great War’ buried in this Cemetery, Fred Philp’s final resting place is located in Grave 98, in Section 3, Row F, alongside those of Lieutenant Marshall [3. F. 93], and Privates; John Warner [3.F.94], Albert Jowett [3. F.95], Ernest Pearson [[3. F. 96], and William Jillings [3.F.97]. [3]
In Scarborough, apart from the Oliver’s Mount War Memorial, Fred Philp’s name is commemorated in Column four of the ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church that lists one hundred and fifty six former members of the parish that had lost their lives during the ‘Great War’ of 1914-18. Fred’s name can also be found on a now [2007] broken gravestone in the town’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section A. Row 5. Grave 27] that also includes the name of his Scarborough born mother; Elizabeth Philp, who had passed way at the age of forty six on the 15TH of October 1913 at her home at No.4 East Sandgate. Interred in Dean Road Cemetery during the 20TH of October 1913, the memorial marking Elizabeth’s final resting place includes the inscription - 'One loving spirit less on earth, one more angel in heaven'
‘Also Frederick George Philp, son of the above and husband of Maud Philp, Killed in action September 18TH 1918’…
During the spring of 1920 Fred’s Beverley born father, George Richard Philp, had been remarried in Scarborough’s Register Office to Florrie Lancaster, the thirty eight years old Scarborough born daughter of George and Harriet Lancaster. Sadly the union had been short lived as George had died at No.4 East Sandgate as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage on the 20TH of August 1925 at the age of sixty-one years. [4]
[Once situated behind the Newcastle Packet Inn, Florrie Philp had continued to reside at No.4 East Sandgate until 1926. After this date she had resided in Scarborough, with her father, George Lancaster, at No.1 Albert Row, where she had passed away as Britain had prepared for another ‘Great War’, on Monday the 22ND of May 1939. Aged fifty-seven years at the time of her death, the remains of Florrie Philp had duly been interred with those of her husband during the afternoon of Monday the 25TH of May in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery, sadly, the couple’s final resting place in Section P, Row 2, Grave 45, is unmarked.
Maud Philp had lived at No.8 Aberdeen Terrace for over fifty years after the death of her husband. During the 1920’s she had resided at the terraced house with her mother, Ellen Deighton, and daughter Olive. A pupil of Scarborough’s Central School, Olive had eventually been married at St Mary’s Parish Church on Saturday the 12TH of October 1946 to Cyril Walter, the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. F.W. Bell, of Hall Lane, Branton, near Lincoln. Given away by her mother, Olive and her husband had subsequently attended a wedding reception at Boyes Café before setting off for their honeymoon at York. The couple had eventually returned to Scarborough to live for many years with Maud Philp at No.8 Aberdeen Terrace, where, on the 1ST of April 1974 Maud had passed away at the age of 79 years.
The parents of Phillip [born at Scarborough Hospital on Saturday the 7th of January 1950], Olive and Walter Bell had resided in Scarborough during their latter years at Flat No.5 of John Horne’s Homes, in Londesborough Road. Taken ill during late August 2003, Walter had duly been admitted into Scarborough General Hospital, where he had died at the age of 86 years on the 2ND of September 2003. Just three months later Olive had also been taken ill and had passed away at the age of eighty five years [also in Scarborough Hospital], on the 8TH of December 2003.
Bailleul British Cemetery Extension is also the final resting place of;
1525 Private Walter Stanley Atkinson. Wounded whilst serving with the 1ST/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, Stanley had died from the effects of his injuries on the 30TH of July 1916. Aged 19 at the time of his death, Private Atkinson had been reported as ‘killed in action’ in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 4TH of August 1916. Born in Scarborough, and the son of Florence and John Atkinson of No.13 Regent Street [No.3 ‘Mount Pleasant’, Queen Street, post war] Walter had served in the Territorial Force 1ST/5TH Battalion before the war and had gone abroad with the unit during April 1915. A veteran of the Battalion’s ‘Baptism of fire’ during the Battle of St Julien [April 23RD- May 3RD 1915] and of over twelve months service in France and Flanders, the grave of Walter Atkinson is located in Section 2, Row F, [Grave 20].
18994 Private Robert Russell Byers. Born at Gateshead and a former resident of Burniston, Bob had been the forty years old husband of Mary E. Byers, of No.13 West Square, Scarborough and had died of wounds on the 12TH of November 1915, whilst serving with the 10TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment [Plot 1, Row C, Grave 32].
63128 Gunner Thomas A. Crosby. Recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as ‘J.A. Crosby’. Tom had been born at Folkton during 1891, and had been the son of Ann Tom had been the son of Ann and Richard Crosby of Staxton, Scarborough. Attached to ‘A’ Battery of the 112 Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery, Crosby had been mortally wounded during June 1917, and had died from the effects of those wounds on the 20TH of June 1917. Gunner Crosby’s Grave is located in Section 3, Row D, [Grave 71].
Second Lieutenant Percy Norman Leopold McInnes. The husband of Florence McInnes of No.26 Royal Avenue, Scarborough, and the son of Harry and Elizabeth McInnes, McInnes had died from the effects of wounds on the 20TH of July 1916, also whilst a member of the 1ST/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. Aged thirty-four at the time of his death, the remains of the Lieutenant are also interred in Section 2, Row F, Grave 59.
[A broken and neglected memorial commemorating Lieutenant McInnes can be found in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section West Mount Terrace/ Border/ Grave 9]. The memorial also includes the name of the officer’s wife, Florence McInnes, born November 29TH 1874, died May 14TH 1914. This memorial also bears the inscription; ‘Allured to brighter worlds and led the way’].
The seeds that would eventually grow into the last campaign of the war had been sown on Sunday the 22ND of September 1918. On that day Haig had submitted to Foch his plans for the continuation of the advance towards St Quentin and Cambrai. Officially named as ‘The Battle of the Canal du Nord, 27TH September—1ST October 1918’, the operation would take place in two stages, at the outset the First Army would capture Bourlon Wood whilst the Third Army would advance eastwards towards Le Cateau and Solesmes. Two days later, the Fourth Army, protected on its right flank by the French First Army, would deliver the main attack against the Hindenburg Line. Timed to begin on Friday the 27TH of September, the new operation was not only to be a British, French affair. It had also been planned for the American Army [along with units of the French Army] to mount its own operation in the Argonne, whilst in the north the Belgian Army, along with the British Second Army, was to gain the high ground to the east of Ypres. Thus, for the first time in the war the combined Allied armies amounting to over one hundred and seventy divisions, were to mount a simultaneous attack on the Western Front between the Meuse, in the south, and the North Sea, a distance of over two hundred miles.
The first of the British operations had begun on Friday the 27TH of September when the First Army had launched its attack on the Canal du Nord. Running from the Canal de Sensee near the village of Arleux in the north to Pont-L’Eveque along the River Oise in the south, the 93 kilometres long ‘Canal of the North’ would not see completion until the 1960’s and is located to the west of Cambrai. Under construction for some time before the out break of war, by September 1918 large stretches of the canal had in fact not been filled with water, except for a section on the extreme right of First Army’s front, where it had been only dry for about a mile between the Army’s boundary and the village of Inchy. With a width of around thirty-five metres the Canal du Nord had been considered as a formidable obstacle. Protected by immense belts of barbed wire and peppered with many machine gun posts the Canal and its extension about a mile beyond, known as the ‘Marquion Line’, combined with the overseeing immense dark bulk of the already much fought over, Bourlon Wood had appeared to many as an almost impossible nut to crack, however, only the best of troops had been selected for the task ahead, which, without a doubt, had had to have been General Arthur Currie’s Canadians Corps.
With an ultimate objective of establishing a line between Morenchies [on the Schelde] and Aubencheul au Bac [on the Sensee], Currie had planned his assault in two phases. With no preliminary bombardment of the enemy’s positions, two divisions [the 1ST and 4TH Canadian] in the centre and two on the flanks [2ND and 3RD Divisions] were to advance behind a creeping artillery and machine gun barrage to establish a line beyond Bourlon Wood, after which all four divisions would continue the advance to seize the bridges over the Schelde to the north east of Cambrai. A simple enough plan of attack on paper, however, before all this could be achieved the Canadians would have to force a crossing of the already mentioned, and formidable, Canal du Nord, then breach the supporting ‘Canal du Nord Line’, and then attack the ‘Marcoing Line, some four miles farther east.
The Canadians had begun to assemble for the assault on the Canal du Nord during the 26TH/27TH of September. The Canadian official historian says this of the momentous occasion in time;
‘The night of 26-27 September was tense with expectation. There was no preliminary barrage and the air was still. In the crowded assembly areas infantry were closely bunched with artillery and machine guns, brought forward this far in readiness for a rapid advance. Apprehensive that a counter preparation by German artillery might come down on their dangerously dense numbers, the troops waited impatiently for Zero. Rain began to fall and the cold ground became slippery, adding to the difficulties expected in the coming assault. Morning arrived overcast and dark, but the rain had stopped. Then, at 5-20am, came a myriad of flashes from the guns in the artillery areas followed by the crash of bursting shells over the enemy positions’…[5]
The Canadian assault had indeed been ‘rapid’. Crossing the dry bed of the Canal with remarkably few casualties just as dawn was breaking, units of the Canadian 1ST Division had soon secured all their objectives. The report in ‘War Diary’ of the 4TH Canadian Battalion is typical of the diary insertions of that day;
‘Battalion attacked in first phase of Cambrai battle. Zero Hour 5-20am. Visibility low at Zero. Barrage was excellent and Battalion made a good start. ‘D’ Company reaching their objective in twelve minutes… Attack progressed favourably and Companies reached their objectives on time…Orders received to stand fast for the night, ready to form defensive right flank with the 1ST Battalion… Casualties—9 officers and 132 other ranks; prisoners taken, 75, guns captured, six 7.7, ten 10.5 and many machine guns. Weather fine’…
Passing through the ranks of 1ST Division, the 4TH Canadian Division had continued the attack and had gained entry into the southern part of Bourlon village at around 9-45 that morning, albeit with many casualties. Heavy fighting had continued throughout the remainder of the 27TH, nevertheless, by the fall of night units of the 1ST and 4TH Divisions, along with a number from the British 11TH Division had cleared the Marcoing trench system and had mopped up the last pockets of enemy resistance.
[During the day one officer belonging to the 3RD Canadian Battalion of1ST Canadian Division, Lieutenant George Fraser Kerr, M.C., M.M., had been awarded with the Victoria Cross for rushing a German strong point single handed, whilst two officers belonging to the 4TH Division, Lieutenants Graham Thompson Lyall [102nd Battalion] and Samuel Lewis Honey, D.C.M. and M.M., had been awarded with the V.C. for their ‘skilful leadership and courage in dealing with enemy strongpoint, both significantly contributing to the capture of Bourlon Wood’. Unfortunately, the twenty-four years old Lieutenant Honey had never lived to receive his reward].
Assisting the Canadian advance and providing invaluable covering fire throughout the twenty seventh had been sixteen tanks belonging to the British 7TH Tank Battalion. Belonging to the First Tank Brigade, the Battalion had been equipped with Mark 4 ‘Female’ tanks [fitted with four Lewis machine guns instead of the two six pounders of the ‘Male’ tank], the battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Walter Beck Thorp, had been divided into four companies, each containing eight tanks, three of these companies had been allotted to the Canadian Corps and had been distributed so that Military Cross holder Captain L.P.B. Merriam’s ‘A’ Company being attached to the 4TH Division, to take part in the operations against Bourlon village, whilst Captain Cyril Ernest Kessell’s ‘C’ Company had gone to the 1ST Division, to take part in the operations in the area near the village of Inchy to the high ground to the north east of Bourlon Wood. The Battalion’s third unit, Major G.G. Rossi-Ashton’s ‘B’ Company had been attached to the 3RD Division and had played little part in the days operations.
The tanks had ‘laid up’ the night before the attack south of the village of Pronville, and had begun their attack from there shortly before ‘Zero Hour’ on the 27TH.
Rumbling forward at their best speed of four miles per hour, the tanks had waddled their way forwards, their crews closed up for action in little more than an evil smelling, tremendously noisy, airless steel box on tracks, had sweated profusely in their thick overalls and steel helmets fitted with chain mail visors intended to give some protection to the crews eyes when the red hot shards of paint, dislodged by enemy machine gun and rifle fire, had begun to zip around the steel box. With a special adaptation fitted to the tanks exhaust pipes to create smoke, as the tanks had gone forward they had laid a smoke screen that would become invaluable as the day progressed. Cluttered with drums smoke screen fuel and numerous other bits of equipment on their backs, each tank had also carried a ‘crib’, a recently adopted improvement on the primitive bundles of timber known as a ‘fascines’, that tanks had previously used to bridge deep trenches.
The battalion had attacked in two waves, the first crossing the start line at Zero Hour, the second twenty minutes later. Leading the way had been two tanks, ‘G 5’ and
‘G 6’ belonging to ‘A’ Company. Both of these vehicles had crossed the Canal du Nord to the south of Lock 4, and had kept ‘well up’ with the infantry’. Subsequently involved in the crushing of the wire of the ‘Canal Line’, the two tanks had also patrolled along the enemies trenches, ‘doing good work with their M.G. fire’. They had then led the infantry to secure the enemy’s second line. When these positions had been secured one tank had trundled down the main street of Bourlon without meeting any serious opposition towards the railway embankment beyond the village where it had silenced numerous enemy machine gun positions with machine gun fire. The two other tanks of the first wave [G7 and 8] had crossed the canal to lead the infantry through Quarry Wood to reach their second objective, where ‘G 7’ had broken down. Meanwhile, ‘G 8’ had gone on to reach Bourlon village where it had dealt with an enemy machine gun position that had been giving the infantry serious trouble.
The second wave of ‘A’ Company, consisting of tanks ‘G 2’ and ‘G 3’, had ran into trouble almost immediately with the former breaking down before it had reached the Canal du Nord, whilst the latter had had a track blown off and its bottom blown out by a tank mine. Meanwhile, tanks G 1 and 3 had crossed to the south of Lock 4, and had caught up with the fast moving infantry at a position known as ‘Sunken Road’ in time to lead them to the ‘Red Line’, in the process crushing huge gaps in the large expanse of enemy barbed wire defences. These two had then proceeded to Bourlon where G1 had cruised up and down in front of the village to envelope the commune in the thick blanket created by her smokescreen. This tank had then proceeded to charge down the village’s main street, smashing down obstacles, and spraying enemy positions with her machine gun fire.
Of ‘C’ Company, one section [of 4 tanks] under Captain Coutts, had operated with the 1ST Canadian Brigade, whilst the other section, belonging to Lieutenant Collins, had worked with 3RD Canadian Brigade [both belonging to 1ST Canadian Division]. The first wave of Coutts section had crossed the canal to crush large holes in the wire defences ‘and get in some good shooting’ before receiving direct hits from German artillery which had burnt both vehicles out. Meanwhile Coutts’s second wave had also crossed the canal safely and had followed a light railway towards ‘Deligny Mill’, where the two tanks had also come under heavy enemy artillery fire that had scored a direct hit on one of the vehicles that had also set it on fire. Nevertheless, leaving its sister burning fiercely behind, the other tank had gone on the final objective.
Two tanks belonging to the first wave of Lieutenant Collins’s section had crossed the immense fields of protecting wire to use their machine guns ‘to good effect’ on the more stubborn enemy positions blocking the Canadians path. Later they had followed the line of the enemy’s wire ‘killing and driving out many of the enemy’ whilst doing so. Whilst all this had been going on, the four tanks of Collins’s second wave had led the Canadians, against little opposition, into the village of Saints les Marques, and then on to Deligny Mill, smashing down numerous barriers of wire, and ‘getting in excellent shooting of retiring enemy’ in the process.
On the whole, a successful day for the 7TH Tank Battalion, the 27TH of September had nevertheless, seen the battalion lose four of its tanks [two knocked out, and two burnt out, whilst a fifth had received a direct hit but had remained in service]. In personnel, the battalion had lost one man killed and sixteen others wounded. Amongst the latter had been twenty two years old; 306735 Private Walter Leonard Sowersby.
Born in Scarborough on the 24TH of May 1896, at No.6 Friar’s Entry, Walter had been the youngest of four sons of Frances and ‘journeyman joiner’ George Thomas Sowersby, who had been residing in Friar’s Entry during 1918. [6]
A former pupil of St Mary’s Parish School, and Friarage Board School, upon leaving school during 1909, the thirteen years old Walter had become an apprentice plumber to local plumbing contractor Mr. William Bolder of Sussex Street, with whom he had still been working by the coming of war in August 1914.
Aged eighteen at the outbreak of hostilities, Sowersby had eventually followed brothers, Arthur, Alfred, and John into the ranks of the British Army during the autumn of 1916. Following his enlistment [at Scarborough] Sowersby had served for over a year as a ‘Sapper’ [Private] in the Royal Engineers [Regimental Number 286231], however, by the onset of 1918 he had transferred to the Tank Corps, and like all recruits, had been sent for training to the Corps Depot, located in Dorset at Bovington Camp.
Sowersby had remained at Bovington until February 1918. Considered competent enough for active service as a gunner at this time, Walter had duly been posted to France and the Tank Corps Training Depot located at Yvrench, a small town located close to the Picadian city of Abbeville. Whilst at Yvrench Sowersby had honed his already acquired skills as a tank gunner in the large tank training ground located in the countryside around the camp, however, following large tank crew losses during the German Spring Offensive, during May the young soldier had been drafted to the 7TH Battalion.
Formed during late 1916 as ‘G’ Company, Heavy Section, Motor Machine gun Service, of the Machine Gun Corps, by May 1918 the tanks of 7TH Battalion had been seasoned veterans of the majority of the major campaigns of the Western Front between 1916 and 1918 including the Third Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Cambrai. Initially issued with the primitive Mark 1 tank, by the time that Sowersby had joined the unit it had been equipped with the more sophisticated Mark 4 Heavy Tank. Weighing 27-28 tons and with a crew of eight this tank had mechanically been similar to the earlier variant. Still with a top speed of around four miles per hour, on the crew’s safety side of the equation, the Mark Four had possessed a thicker armoured skin capable of withstanding a direct hit by the lethal German anti tank round known as a ‘K Bullet’. In addition the tank had had an external armoured fuel tank instead of the two that had been fitted inside the older versions that had roasted so many tank crews that a special unit had been formed to extricate the incinerated bodies of tank crew from their burnt out vehicles.
Attached to Military Cross holder Major Oswald Vernon Guy’s ‘C’ Company, Sowersby had been a member of the crew of ‘Growler’, and by the beginning of August 1918 he had been a veteran of three months of service with this vehicle. Stationed eight kilometres to the north west of Arras, in the village of Mont St Eloi at the start of the Allied Offensive of 1918, by the 13TH of August that year ‘C’ Company and the remainder of 7TH Battalion had been moved to the Somme Sector, where the battalion had assembled at Bienvillers-au-Bois. Attached to 4TH Corps of Third Army, the 7TH Battalion had duly taken part in the Second Battle of Somme [21ST August—3RD September 1918], when on the 21ST of August, the battalion had assisted the 37TH Division in the capture of Ablainzeville and the high ground to the east of Bucquoy, and the 63RD [Royal Naval] Division and 5TH Divisions in the taking of a second objective in a line some 2,000 yards further on.
On the 25TH of August ‘C’ Company had assisted the New Zealand Division in operations to seize the road leading into Bapaume. During that day three of the Company’s tanks had become casualties to the very heavy enemy artillery fire that had been experienced that day.
Sowersby’s battalion had continued to provide sterling support for the infantry throughout the remainder of August. On the very last day of the month the formation had assisted the 95TH Brigade of 32ND Division with the capture of Beugny, an operation that had seen the Battalion losing another four of its vehicles to very heavy machine gun and artillery fire. In continual action until the 2ND of September, on that date the exhausted unit had been retired from the front line to return to the Arras front, where the unit had spent several days resting and repairing its battle worn crews and tanks.
The 7TH Battalion had duly received orders to take part in the operations at the Canal du Nord and by the 20TH of September the unit had been in the forward area. The Battalion’s ‘War Diary’ reports for this day…’Battalion H.Q. moved forward to Bihucourt, opened at 10am. Tanks trekked cross-country to a preliminary lying up spot at Morchies. Tanks carefully concealed in ruins of village. C.O. visited Canadian Corps tankodrome and Company Headquarters’… [6]
Throughout the remaining few days before the start of the Canal du Nord operations the Battalion had made its meticulous preparations for the impending battle. The Battalion’s C.O. and his tank commanders had reconnoitred their line of approach to the canal, whilst the tank crews had stocked up their ammunition and stores and fitted the special ‘cribs’ to their vehicles. By the 25TH all had been made ready. On that day the unit’s War Diarist had reported…’Company Commanders on liaison with infantry Brigades. Tanks left Morchies at 8-30pm and moved forward to a lying up spot near Pronville. En route two tanks broke tracks, which were promptly repaired’…[6]
Throughout the following day Sowersby and the remainder of the 7TH Battalion’s tank crews had rested, whilst the unit had established an advanced Battalion H.Q. at 4TH Canadian Divisional Headquarters. Later that evening Colonel Thorp had visited his men as they had waited to go into action in a few hours time. The unit’s War Diary reports…’Everything O.K.’…
Grievously wounded during the operations of the 27TH of September, Walter Sowersby had eventually been evacuated from the battlefield to the ruined village of Boisleux-au-Mont, located some kilometres to the south of Arras, where he had been admitted into the 30TH Casualty Clearing Station, that same day, he had died from the effects of his wounds.
The Sowersby’s had initially been informed that their son had been wounded, however, shortly after receiving this news they had received word that he had expired. The only casualty of Scarborough to have been reported wounded and then died in the same local casualty list, the listing in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 11TH of October 1918 reports;
‘Wounded in the arm - Gunner W. Sowersby, of the Tank Corps, whose parents reside at 6, Friar’s Entry, was wounded in the arm on the 27TH of September’…
‘Gunner dies of wounds - The death has occurred from wounds received in action of Gunner Walter Sowersby, Tank Corps, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Sowersby, Friar’s Entry. He was wounded on the 27TH of September, but his relatives were unaware that his injuries had been serious. Death took place on the same day, however. Gunner Sowersby was aged 22, and had been in France about six months. He was apprenticed to Mr. Bolder, plumber, and had he remained in civilian life would have been out of his time. Three brothers are still serving, and when Gunner Sowersby was on leave two of the brothers were also at home’…
The ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths’ column of the same newspaper had included;
‘Sowersby—Died September 27TH of wounds received in action on the same date, aged 22 years, Gunner Walter Sowersby, Tank Corps, beloved son of Mr. and Mrs. George Sowersby, 6 Friar’s Entry, Scarborough. —Deeply regretted’…
Shortly after his death the remains of Walter Sowersby had been interred in the cemetery that had been attached to the 30TH Casualty Clearing Station. Now known as ‘Bucquoy Road Cemetery’, Walter’s final resting place is located in the Pas de Calais Department of France, on the right hand side of the D 919 road heading south from Arras to Ayette. Some 9 kilometres from Arras, the Cemetery is situated just before the crossroads with the D 36 road between the villages of Ficheux and Boisleux-au-Mont. Containing the graves of just over two thousand casualties of the ‘Great War’ [plus 100 of World War 2], Walter had been the only member of the 7TH Tank Battalion to be interred in Buquoy Road, his final resting place is located in Section 4, Row A, Grave 31. [8]
Commemorated on the town’s Oliver’s Mount War Memorial, elsewhere in Scarborough Walter Sowersby’s name is remembered in St Mary’s Parish Church. A member of the church choir, and a former bell ringer, Walter’s name can be found in column five of the ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall of the church. Walter’s name is also included on a gravestone in Scarborough’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section B, Border, Grave 40] that also bears the names of his parents [the memorial states he had ‘died of wounds’ on the 28TH of September 1918].
Having lived at No.6 Friar’s Entry for many years George Thomas Sowersby had died ‘suddenly’ at the terraced house during Saturday the 13TH of April 1935 at the age of eighty years. His funeral had subsequently taken place during the afternoon of Wednesday the 17TH of April. Two years later Frances Sowersby had passed away at the house during Friday the 29TH of January 1937. Also aged eighty years at the time of her death, Frances’s remains had been interred with those of her husband during the afternoon of Tuesday the 2ND of February 1937.
Despite having served on the Western Front throughout the majority of the war Walter’s eldest brothers, John William Sowersby had survived to return to Scarborough. John had served as a driver [Regimental Number 444] in the Army Service Corps. Alf Sowersby had also served as a Private [M2/103524] in the A.S.C., whilst Alfred had served as a Private [270398] in the Royal Scots.
Following the death of Private Sowersby the 7TH Tank Battalion had continued to serve with gallantry throughout the remainder of the war. On the 28TH of September the Battalion had assisted the Canadian with their assault on the Marcoing Line. Two days later ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies had been involved with the 7TH Canadian Brigade’s attack on the villages of Lancourt and Beicourt. During these operations the Battalion had lost two of its tanks. One to artillery fire, whilst the other had been surrounded and cut off by the enemy. The commander of this vehicle had eventually been killed, whilst his crew had been taken prisoner. This had been the last battle to be fought by the Battalion. During the four days of action the unit had lost four officers and thirteen other ranks killed, nineteen officers, and one hundred and fourteen men had been wounded, whilst a further ten of its men had been reported as missing.
By November 1918 the 7TH Battalion had still been in Northern France, where it had been encamped near to the village of Blingel. The unit had just received eight of the new Mark 5 Tanks and their crews had been undergoing various course of instruction in their driving and maintenance preparatory to going into action once again. However, on the eleventh day of the month the Battalion had been assembled at 10-30am to learn that the Germans had accepted the Allies terms for the ending of the war. Duly at 11am that day hostilities had ceased, the news had been received by the battalion with shouts of joy; there had been no further work for the men that day.
By the beginning of October virtually everyone had known that the war was nearly finished. As early as the 4TH Germany had been making overtures to the American President [Woodrow Wilson] in search of an ending to the conflict, and two days later a note had arrived in Paris from the German, Turkish, and Austrian Governments, asking for an immediate Armistice. For once, Foch, the Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces on the Western Front, had been delighted to acknowledge Haig, the architect of the ruination of the German Army, by showing him a newspaper report of the Central power’s note, and saying ‘here is the immediate result of the British piercing the Hindenburg Line…the enemy has asked for an armistice’…Nevertheless, despite these intimations, the killing had continued.
At the start of October the battle worn Canadians, having brilliantly met the first objective of the battle, had continued their march eastwards towards Cambrai. Pressing forwards towards the Douai road, the 1St, 3RD, and 4TH Divisions had ran into unexpected heavy concentrations of barbed wire, where the three units had suffered terrific losses. Nevertheless despite this setback the Canadians had crawled their way forwards towards their intermediate objective of seizing bridges over the Canal de l’Escaut to establish a united front across to the Canal de la Sensee. However, with his force exhausted beyond belief by this stage, the Canadian Corps C.O. General Arthur Currie, had called a halt to allow his troops time to rest and reorganise.
The Canadian advance had continued on the 8TH of October. During that day the 2ND and 3RD Division had used hastily built bridges to force a crossing of the Canal de l’Escaut, the 3RD Division subsequently reaching as far as the eastern outskirts of Cambrai, whilst the 2ND Division had launched an attack [in conjunction with British units] to the north east of the city. During this Division’s advance it had had come under such heavy artillery fire that the Division’s various fighting units had been forced to dig in. Nevertheless, despite the intense enemy fire, the Canadian Light Horse had decided to press on with its advance and had fallen foul of the enemy’s machine gun fire that had caused the loss of a dozen men and forty seven horses.
Cambrai had eventually been taken by the Canadians at 5-00am on Saturday the 11TH of October 1918. With the city in Allied hands Currie had duly handed over its defence to the British 22ND Corps, having lost over 1,500 officers, and over 29,200 of his men between the 27TH of September and the 11TH of October, during that period the Canadians had captured over 18,500 of the enemy, over 370 of his artillery guns, and close on 2,000 machine guns. In addition, during the forty seven days between the 26TH of August and the 11TH of October, the Canadian Corps had advanced against a determined enemy for over twenty five miles, having liberated over fifty towns and villages along with 116 square miles of French soil along the often-bitter way. An altogether impressive testament to the fighting qualities of the Canadian soldier of the 1914-18 ‘Great War’.
The day before the Canadians had fought their way into Cambrai, to the south, the British 3RD Army had set off towards the River Selle in hot pursuit of the retreating enemy. Amongst the units that had been involved in these operations had been the 7TH Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment. Attached to the 50TH Brigade of the 17TH [Northern], at 5pm on the tenth the Battalion [a part of 6TH Corps of Third Army] had mounted an abortive assault on the heavily defended ruined village of Neuvilly that had cost the 7TH East Yorks dearly.
The following day the Battalion had been involved in an operation mounted by two other battalions belonging to 50TH Brigade [7TH Dorsets and 10TH West Yorkshires] that had tried once again to take possession of the village. Faced with a solid wall of machine gun bullets coming from well-concealed positions and an intense artillery bombardment, this attack had also been a bloody and costly failure. By this time the 7TH Battalion had lost two officers killed and four others wounded, whilst the other ranks had lost twenty two men killed, one hundred and twenty four wounded, whilst another twenty six men had been listed as missing, and two other ‘wounded and missing’. Relieved during the 13TH of October the surviving East Yorkshiremen had marched wearily back to billets at Inchy.
The 7TH East Yorkshires had played little further part in the pursuit to the Selle. However, during Thursday the 17TH of October, the opening day of the ensuing ‘Battle of the Selle’, the Battalion had received orders to once again, along with the 7TH Dorsets, undertake an assault on Neuvilly and the high ground to the east of the village. Two days later the men of the two battalions had moved forward during the evening of the of the 19TH to take up their assembly positions in readiness for the attack early the next day. Crossing the Selle in complete darkness, the Battalion had duly taken over a series of posts from the men of the 9TH Duke of Wellingtons to nervously wait for Zero Hour. Knowing full well what lay in store for them, it can easily be imagined what thoughts had been going through the soldiers minds.
At 2am the darkness of Sunday the 20TH of October had been torn apart with the flash and thunder of the opening British artillery bombardment…
’When the barrage fell, it was evident from the volume of fire which met the attacking troops, that stiff opposition was to be expected. Two hundred yards east of the river [Selle] there was a road running from south east to north west, and here the enemy had several machine guns well dug in. But nothing could stay the advance, the machine guns were rushed and the enemy’s resistance beaten down. Just beyond the road a belt of barbed wire checked the advance, until Sergeant A.L. Biggs, under heavy fire, rushed forward, uprooted the stakes and the attackers swept on to the line of the railway where much stiff fighting had took place. The records here state that ‘no prisoners were taken’!
Half an hour had sufficed for the capture of the Battalion’s first objective, and then, at 2-34am, the barrage moved forward again to the high ground beyond [the village].
The East Yorkshires were worried by enfilade machine gun fire from the right and particularly by the fire of a gun craftily concealed on the railway line [the second railway east of the river] until Sergeant Biggs again distinguished himself by leading a Lewis Gun section against the hostile guns. Under cover of the fire from the section he personally rushed the enemy gun, which was firing at point blank range, killing the team single-handed and captured the gun.
The whole attack had gone splendidly. ‘The enemy troops’ records the Battalion [War] Diary of the 7TH East Yorkshires, ‘were of good quality—the opposition was strong but not strong enough to stop our victorious advance; the spirit of the Battalion throughout was excellent’…[9]
Relieved later that morning, during the action at Neuvilly the 7TH Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment had killed around one hundred and twenty of the enemy and had captured over a hundred prisoners, including six officers. In addition, the unit had taken some thirty machine guns. Eventually relieved from duties on the 21ST of October, the surviving members of the battalion had marched back to Inchy, where the customary post battle calling of the unit’s rolls had found that three officers had been wounded, two ‘other ranks’ had been killed, 59 men had been wounded and another four were missing. However, further investigation had found that twelve men belonging to the battalion had lost their lives that day, whilst another would subsequently die as a result of wounds received that day far from the battlefield. Amongst the men who had killed in action during the capture of Neuvilly had been nineteen years old; 51557 Lance Corporal John William Patrick.
Although born [during the September Quarter of 1899] in the nearby village of East Ayton, John Patrick had lived for most of his life in Scarborough, where by 1901, the one year old had been residing with parents Margaret, and Weights and Measures Inspecting father, William Patrick, in the affluent South Cliff district of the town, at No.38 West Street. [10]
A pupil of Scarborough’s St Martins Grammar School from the autumn term of 1911, three years later Patrick had passed the Cambridge Local Certificate [Junior] Examination, and had set his sights on what may have been a promising career in law, however, with the coming of war the youngster attention had turned, like the majority of the young men of the summer of 1914, towards a career in the military. Under age for military service at the beginning of hostilities, Patrick had remained at St Martins until the summer of 1915.
John Patrick had eventually enlisted into the East Yorkshire Regiment during the spring of 1917 at the regiment’s Depot located in the East Riding town of Beverley. Initially attached to the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion, Patrick had remained on ‘home service’ with this unit until the end of the German Spring Offensive of 1918, a desperate period of the war when every available man had been sent to the Western Front as replacements for the 281,0000 casualties that had been suffered by the B.E.F. during April, and May 1918. Promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal by this stage of the war, Patrick had landed in France during late July 1918 to join the 7TH Battalion in France during the last day of the month.
Formed at Beverley during September 1914, the 7TH Battalion had been amongst the seventy-two ‘Service’ battalions that had been formed in Britain during the early stages of the war following the departure of the British Expeditionary Force for France. Eventually assigned to the 50TH Brigade of 17TH Division, the Battalion had completed its war training around Wareham in Dorset. Following its landing in France during July 1915 the 7TH East Yorks had served in the Ypres Sector until it had moved to the Somme Sector in time to take part in the Somme Offensive, where the unit had been ‘blooded’ in the attack on the village of Fricourt on the opening day of the operation [1ST July 1916].
Since that time the 7TH Battalion had become veterans of two years of war on the Western Front having taken part in many of the Front’s bloodiest operations. By the time that Corporal Patrick had joined the battalion [31st of July 1918], it had been serving in the Somme Sector, in trenches to the east of Bouzincourt.
Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel G. East-King, the 7TH Battalion had played little part in the opening operations of the Battle of Amiens [8TH-12TH August]. However, during the ensuing battles of the Hindenburg Line Patrick and the remainder of his battalion had taken part in operations on the Somme including [on the 24TH of August], the recapture of the notorious Mouquet Farm atop Thiepval Ridge. Two days later, the 7TH Battalion’s C.O., following a hard won battle, had had the distinction of being the first British officer to enter the ruined village of Pozieres. Subsequently involved in the Battle of Epehy [18TH of September], the 7TH East Yorkshires had played no part in the Battle of the Canal du Nord or the subsequent Battle of the St Quentin Canal [27TH September-5TH of October].
By the night of the 9TH of October the 17TH Division’s 51ST Brigade had reached, and eventually captured the village of Montigny, and during that same night orders had been issued for the 50TH Brigade to pass through the ranks of 51ST to attack the village of Neuvilly early the following day. Duly, just before midnight the 7TH Battalion, and the remainder of 50TH Brigade, had received orders to move from their encampments near the village of Caullery during the early hours of the tenth to assembly positions just to the west of Montigny.
It had been 5-20am before the 7TH Battalion had been able to make its move. The unit had carried out an uneventful approach march until it had reached Inchy. Finding the village under a heavy artillery bombardment, the East Yorks had, nonetheless, passed through the barrage, reportedly suffering ‘only a few casualties’ in the process. Though harassed continually by enemy shellfire, the 7TH Battalion had continued its advance until the unit had reached positions just to the south west of Neuvilly, close to the Inchy-Neuvilly road, where the officers and men of the Battalion had awaited the order to begin the operation that would ultimately cause the demise of Corporal Patrick.
At the time of their son’s death the Patrick family had bee residing in a house known as ‘Beechcroft’ located in Scarborough’s Trafalgar Road. Following the ending of hostilities on the 11TH of November 1918, the family, up till then without word of John’s loss, had in all probability, expected the imminent return of their beloved youngest son. Of course it was not to be, and to their dismay they had duly received news of death many days after the ending of the war. Corporal Patrick’s loss had been summed up in just one sentence that had appeared in one of the last ‘Scarboro Casualties’ listing that had appeared in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’, on Friday the 22ND of November 1918.
‘Lance Corporal J.W. Patrick - Official news has been received by Mr. and Mrs. W. Patrick, Beechcroft, Trafalgar Road, that their son, Lance Corporal J. W. Patrick, 7TH East Yorks., gave his life for his country on Sunday, October 20TH’…
The ‘Birth, Marriages, and Deaths’ column of the same newspaper had also included an epitaph to the dead soldier;
‘Patrick—On Sunday, October 20TH, at Neuvilly, France, Lance Corporal J.W. Patrick, aged 19 years, dearly beloved son of Mr. and Mrs. W. Patrick. ‘Beechcroft’, Trafalgar Road, Scarborough. —‘Called to higher service’…
Long before the Patrick’s had received word of their son’s demise, the remains of the Lance Corporal, and those of ten other men belonging to the 7TH East Yorks who had also lost their lives during the 20TH of October, had initially been interred in a small battlefield cemetery located close to the village of Neuvilly, known as Neuvilly British Cemetery No.2’. However, shortly after the Armistice the remains of these men, along with those of seventy five other Britons, and forty nine German prisoners, had been exhumed to be re-interred in the larger Selridge British Cemetery close to the village of Montay. Located a little to the north of the town of Le Cateau, Montay is some nineteen kilometres to the south east of Cambrai and Selridge British Cemetery is located about one and a half kilometres to the west of Montay. Today Selridge contains the graves of nearly one hundred and fifty British casualties of the ‘Great War’, Corporal John William Patrick’s’ final resting place is to be found in the Cemetery’s Section 2, Row B, Grave 17, whilst the majority of his comrades are interred in other parts of the cemetery.
[The remains of the 7TH Battalion’s Privates Walter Frederick Sirrs, and George Frederick Reason are interred in the nearby Montay-Neuvilly Road Cemetery, whilst the remains of Hull born Private Herbert Kelsey had never been recovered for the battlefield. Herbert’s name is commemorated on Panel 4 of the Vis-en- Atois Memorial to the Missing. The mortally wounded Private William Harold Plumpton had been evacuated from the battlefield near Neuvilly to a Base Hospital at Le Treport, where he had died from the effects of his wounds, also on the 20TH of October 1918. His remains are interred in Mont Huon Cemetery at Le Treport].
One of forty one ‘Old Martinians’ that had lost their lives during the Great War, John William Patrick’s name had been included on the St Martin’s Grammar School War Memorial that takes the form of a large stone cross, which stands outside the entrance to St Martin-on the Hill Parish Church. Now [2007] badly eroded, the names included on the memorial are barely discernable. Corporal Patrick’s name can also be found in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section L/ Border/ B/ Grave 47] on a neglected gravestone that also contains the name of sister Margurite ‘Daisy’, and father William Patrick.
Shortly after the death of their son, Margaret and William Patrick, along with daughter Daisy, had left Trafalgar Road to reside at No.16 in nearby Mayville Avenue, however, by the spring of 1923 the family had moved to the village of Newby where they had resided at ‘The Bungalow’, where, Daisy Patrick had died at the age of thirty five years during Wednesday the 5TH of March 1924. Following the death of their daughter, William and Margaret Patrick had moved to the village of Scalby where the couple had resided at No.1 Curraghmore Terrace, where William Patrick had shortly died at the age of sixty seven years on Tuesday the 23RD of June 1925. The remains of Mr. Patrick had duly been interred with those of his daughter during the afternoon of Monday the 29TH of June 1925.
In addition to that of John William Patrick, the Oliver’s Mount War Memorial bears the names of two other men with almost the same surname; C/12222 Lance Corporal Albert Victor Pattrick had been born in Hull during 1883, and had been the eldest son of ‘insurance superintendent Robert George, and Margaret Pattrick of ‘Earlsmere’, No.12 Manor Road Scarborough. A former clerk in the employ of Scarborough’s renowned Laughton family, ‘Vic’ Pattrick had died from wounds on the 25TH of March 1918 whilst serving with the 7TH [service] Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Aged thirty five years at the time of his death, the remains of Corporal Pattrick are interred in France, in Section 2/ Row C/ Grave 7, of Noyon New British Cemetery [Once a member of Scarborough’s Huntriss Row Constitutional Club, ‘Vic Patrick’s name is included on the magnificent stained glass window memorial to the sixteen members that had gave their lives during the ‘Great War’ that adorns the staircase of today’s Conservative Club]. Born in Hull during 1886 Vic’s younger brother, 149308 Private George Douglas Pattrick had once in worked Scarborough as a solicitors clerk, however, by the time of his death on the 7TH of January 1919 in a York Military Hospital as a result of the ‘Spanish Flu’, he had been serving with the 41ST Battalion of the Machine Gun Corps. Another ‘Old Martinian’, the remains of George Pattrick are interred in Section 2 /Row C/ Grave 37 of York’s Fulford Cemetery.
By then well within the territory that had seen much of the action of the opening stages of the war during the summer of 1914, a little to the north of the East Yorkshire Regiment, the men belonging to the 1ST/8TH Battalion of the Prince of Wales’s Own [West Yorkshire Regiment] had also seen much action on the 20TH of October during an attack on the twin villages of Solesmes, and St Python.
More popularly known as ‘The Leeds Rifles’, the Territorial Force unit had been attached to the 185TH Brigade of the 62ND [2ND West Yorkshire] Division, and on the twentieth, in conjunction with the 2ND/20TH Battalion of the London Regiment, had been assigned with the capture of the two villages of St Python and Solesmes. Taking St Python without too much trouble the two units had turned their attention to the capture of Solesmes. Both Battalions had begun their approach to their objective by crossing the Selle, following this the two units had taken up their attack positions to the east of Solesmes, again without serious loss, the Leeds Rifles losing just one officer and four men wounded to hostile shellfire. At 7am the barrage heralding the start of the attack had begun. Wyrall takes up the story;
‘The 8TH West Yorkshires [Lieutenant Colonel N.A. England] advancing on a two company front [‘A’ on the right and ‘D’ on the left], encountered opposition almost immediately from a Factory on the right front of the Battalion, but ‘A’ Company, by a turning movement from the south, cleared the ground east of the Factory capturing two 77mm field guns, two trench mortars, four light machine guns and 130 prisoners. This success cleared the way for ‘D’ Company, whose objective was the Factory. The latter was captured and ‘D’, pushing forward another two hundred yards, established a line of posts. ‘A’ Company then advanced to a road running northeast from the Factory, and together the two companies then established a line of posts with platoons in support. ‘B’ Company allotted the task of clearing the ground to the west of the railway suffered heavily from shellfire meeting also with stiff opposition from hostile machine gun fire from the Quarry. But on the left of ‘B’ the advance of the London Regiment relieved the opposition and the quarry was captured with forty prisoners. ‘C’ Company, now in touch with the situation, closely supported the leading companies’…[1]
By about 10am that day the Leeds Rifles had established a line of posts on the high ground to the west of the village of Romeries, where touch was obtained with the 2ND /20TH Londons. Later that afternoon the Germans had launched a concerted counter attack on the two battalions but this had been broken up, the enemy retiring in ‘disorder’.
Wyrall does not tell of the number of casualties sustained by the Leeds Rifles during the 20TH of October. However, information gathered from ‘Soldiers died in the Great War’ database shows the Battalion had lost nineteen men killed in action that day. Amongst them had been another nineteen years old soldier; 63933 Rifleman Stanley Clark Redman.
Born in Scarborough during the June Quarter of1899, at No.17 Wooler Street, Stanley had been the youngest son of Louisa Bell, and ‘milk dealer’ George Chapman Redman. [11]
A pupil of Miss Julia Pritchard’s infant department, and eventually that of Mr. William Drummond’s Junior section of Gladstone Road Board School, Redman had left education at the age of thirteen to become an apprentice in the drapery department of Hopper and Mason, the renowned Scarborough firm of drapers that had been located in a magnificent building in Scarborough’s Westborough that would eventually become the equally popular Rowntrees Departmental Store until its demise during the 1980’s to make way for the present day [2007] Debenhams ‘superstore’.
Aged fourteen by the outbreak of war Stanley had obviously been too young to enlist at the outset, however, by the spring of 1917 he had joined the army [at Scarborough] and had initially served as a Private [regimental Number 35232] in the Territorial Force’s 2ND/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. Redman had remained with this unit ‘on home service’ until 1918 when the Battalion had been disbanded, its men being transferred to other units. Amongst a number of men posted to the West Yorkshire Regiment, Redman had initially served with the 3RD [Reserve] Battalion at York’s Fulford Barracks until July 1918 when he, like so many more young soldiers during that desperate period of the war [including John William Patrick], had been sent to the Western Front to reinforce the seriously depleted ranks of the B.E.F. in the wake of the German Spring Offensives on the Somme and Lys during April- May 1918.
A pre war Territorial Force unit, which incidentally, had been training at Scarborough at the outset of the war, during July 1918 the Leeds Rifles, and the remainder of 62ND Division, had been ordered to the Marne Sector, along with the 51ST [Highland] Division, to act as a counter attack force and to help relieve various hard pressed units of the French Army. Going into action for the first time on the 20TH of July, during that day the Leeds Rifles had taken part in an abortive attack along the valley of the River Ardre that within an hour of its beginning had seen the Rifles losing over two hundred and fifty of its men to heavy enemy artillery and machine gun fire for precious little gain. The Battalion had once again gone into action on the 23RD of July. On that occasion the unit had been tasked with the capture of high ground above the village of Marfaux.
Once again, within thirty minutes of going into battle the battalion had suffered heavy casualties, including the loss of all of its officers. Nevertheless, led by its N.C.O.’s the Leeds Rifles had remained in action until the night of the 26TH /27TH of July, when the battalion had moved back to ‘Ecueil Farm’. Whilst there the battalion had been reinforced by a draft of ten officers and two hundred other ranks, amongst them many eighteen and nineteen years old ‘fresh off the boat’ battle inexperienced soldiers, including Stanley Redman.
With little time for training and acclimatisation, Redman and his comrades had duly received their ‘baptism of fire’ on the 28TH of July, during the Battle of Tardenois [20-31ST July 1918], when they had taken part in an assault on Bligny Ridge that would see the Leeds Rifles being awarded with the Croix de Guerre, the highest of French awards for bravery, that, apart from the 8TH West Yorks, had been bestowed on only two other British infantry regiments [the Devonshire Regiment, and Somerset Light Infantry] during the war of 1914-18.
Assigned with the recapture of the recently lost French front line at the Montaigne de Bligny [Bligny Ridge], that day the 185TH Brigade had made its assault with the Leeds Rifles on the left flank and 1ST/5TH Devons on the right, and with 2ND /5TH West Yorks in support. All had initially gone well until the two battalions had reached the foot of the Montaigne, when the Germans, concealed in deep woods in skilfully camouflaged positions, had opened an intense fire with their machine guns.
Faced with an almost solid wall of fire, the Leeds Rifles plan of attack had quickly changed from that of a massed Battalion advance into a series of ‘rushes’, that had gradually seen the battalion make progress up the hill, albeit with heavy casualties. Wyrall reports of the action;
…’Soon there was hesitation amongst the enemy troops and the West Yorkshires, rushing with the bayonet, completed the discomfiture of the Germans for, though they gallantly tried to stay the advance of the British troops, they could not do so; eventually they turned and fled, and the whole line of attacking troops pressed on and drove the enemy from the crest of the hill. Thus the Montaine de Bligny fell to the victorious 8TH West Yorkshires of the 62ND Division. It was a grand fight. Nothing could have been finer than the way in which all ranks went forward and, after the first check, resolutely set to work t sweep the enemy from the side of the hill’…[1]
By the end of the day’s fighting the exhausted Leeds Rifles had captured around sixty nine prisoners, 9 machine guns, and the all-important Bligny Ridge. It had cost the battalion fourteen killed, ninety six wounded, and eleven men missing. Despite its losses, the dash and gallantry displayed by the Leeds Rifles that day had been congratulated by General Guillamat, the Commander of the French 5TH Army, who had ordered the whole battalion to be awarded with the Croix de Guerre with bronze palm leaves.
Eventually relieved from their duties on the Marne, by the end of July Redman and the remaining Leeds Rifles had been moved further to the north, where the unit had been stationed behind the British line between Amiens and Ypres.
Subsequently involved in the Second Battle of Bapaume [31ST August -3RD September 1918], on the 1ST of September the Leeds Rifles had lead the assault on the heavily defended village of Vaulx- Vraucourt, where once again the battalion had undergone the terrifying experience of advancing into the teeth of a veritable hurricane of German machine gun bullets, which despite the best efforts of the Yorkshiremen, had forced a halt to their advance, once again having achieved very little gain for the loss of many of its men. Two officers of the Leeds Rifles had lost their lives that day whilst another five had been wounded. The ‘other ranks’ had lost eighteen men killed in action, and another eighty seven had been wounded, a further eleven men had been listed as ‘missing’.
Injured in his right shoulder by a piece of shrapnel during the action at Vaulx-Vraucourt, the news of Stanley’s wounding had been included in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 6TH of September, by this time Redman had been receiving treatment in a Base Hospital at Boulogne before being shipped back to ‘Blighty’ for further therapy in a military hospital in Sheffield.
Out of action for almost two months Redman had returned to France on the 17TH of October. Two days later he had rejoined his battalion at Inchy just as the Leeds Rifles had been making their final preparations for the attack due to begin the next day.
Living in Scarborough at No.13 Livingstone Road during the latter stages of the war, George and Louisa Redman had heard no news of their youngest son’s whereabouts or fate until well after the Armistice when they had received a telegram from the War Office reporting Stan as ‘wounded and missing in action since the 20TH of October 1918’. The news had been included in a casualty list that had been featured in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 29TH of November 1918;
‘Wounded and missing - News has been received that Rifleman Stanley Redman, 8TH West Yorkshires, Leeds Rifles, and late 5TH Yorks, has been posted wounded and missing since October 20TH. He only rejoined his regiment on the 19TH, after being wounded. He is the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. Redman, 13 Livingstone Road, and is only 19 years of age. An elder brother is still serving in France’…
By the time that the Redman’s had received word of their son’s predicament the young soldier’s remains had been found on the battlefield and subsequently taken to the communal cemetery at Briastre, a village located eighteen kilometres to the east of Cambrai, where they had interred until 1922, when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had exhumed the remains of Rifleman Redman and the remainder of the handful of British casualties that had been buried in this cemetery, to re-inter them in the nearby Belle Vue British Cemetery. Located some 800 kilometres to the east of the village, near to Belle Vue Farm, this cemetery contains the graves of nearly 150 casualties of the Great War, five of whom, including Stanley Redman, had lost their lives on the 20TH of October 1918 whilst serving with the Leeds Rifles. The graves of those five Riflemen; 63884 Private Joseph Clark, 81360 Private Benjamin Barrowclough, 81415 Private Henry McIrvine, 63933 Private Stanley Clark Redman, and Australian born 20446 Private Thomas Coulton, are grouped together in Belle Vue’s Section A, in Graves 3 to 7 respectively.
[For some unknown reason the remains of the majority of the other 14 men of the Leeds Rifles that had also been killed in action during the 20TH of October had been interred in Quievy Communal Cemetery Extension except for two men who had been interred in the Communal Cemetery Extension at Romeries. The remains of twenty one years old 81407 Private George Lord, had never been found, and his name is commemorated on Panel 4 of the Vis-en Artios Memorial to the Missing].
No more information regarding the demise of Stanley Redman had appeared in the local press and his name had duly been included on Scarborough’s Oliver’s Mount Memorial. Stan’s name had also been remembered by the Junior Department of his old school in Gladstone Road who had included his name on a ‘Roll of Honour’ commemorating another seventy two former pupils [including two nurses] who had also lost their lives during the war of 1914-18, that had been unveiled by their former Headmaster, Mr. Drummond, on the 14TH of December 1927 [two days before the thirteenth anniversary of the German bombardment of Scarborough].
Stanley Redman’s name can also be found in Scarborough amongst the names commemorated in column five of the ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church. Also a former member of Scarborough’s ‘tin tabernacle’, Redman’s name is also included on the War Memorial inside St Columba’s Church. Located in the church’s so called ‘Ladies Chapel this memorial contains the names of a dozen members of the congregation who had lost their lives during the ‘Great War’, and is inscribed with the words;
’In memory of the men of who worshipped in St. Columba’s Church and were killed in action, 1914-1918’…
‘All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave to save mankind’….
Stan’s name can also be found on a now [2007] fallen memorial in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [situated a stones throw away from that bearing the name of Private John William Patrick, in Section L, Border, Grave B 20] which also bears the names of the soldier’s mother, Louisa Bell Redman, who had passed away at the family home at No.13 Livingstone Road during November 1928 at the age of sixty one years. Stan’s father, George Chapman Redman, had also died at No.13 Livingstone Road, on Monday the 20TH of September 1937. Aged seventy one years at the time, George’s remains had been interred in Manor Road Cemetery following a service of Remembrance at St Columba’s during the afternoon of Thursday the 23RD of September. Stanley’s only sister, Trevellian Gertrude Redman had never married, and following the death of her parents had continued to live in the house in Livingstone Road until her own death at the age of seventy five years, during late December 1966, her remains had subsequently been interred in the family plot during the afternoon of the 30TH of December 1966.
A year after his death the following epitaphs had been dedicated to Stanley Redman in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 24TH of October 1919;
‘In memory of our loving brother, Stanley Clark Redman, killed in action October 20TH 1918. —Gone but not forgotten by George, Norah, and Eddie’…
‘In sacred memory of our dear son and brother, Stanley Clark Redman, aged 19, killed in action Sunday, October 20TH, 1918. —‘He hath gotten the victory’…
‘We often think of days gone by, when we were all together, a shadow o’er our lives is cast, a loved one gone forever—From his ever loving mother, father, sister and brothers’…
A gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery [Regimental Number 308910] Stanley’s elder brother, Richard Redman had survived over three years of service on the Western Front to be ‘demobbed’ from military service during 1919, by this time he had attained the rank of Bombardier [the artillery’s equivalent of a Corporal].
Following the death of Rifleman Redman, the Leeds Rifles had remained in billets in the village of Quievy until the 3RD of November when the battalion had once more moved forward preparatory to an attack to be made the next day by 62ND Division in conjunction with the Guards Division towards the town of Maubeuge. What was to be the Battalion’s last campaign of the war had begun at 5-30am on the 4TH of November 1918, and by late afternoon the Leeds Rifles had advanced as far as a farm known as ‘La Belle Maison’ without meeting any serious opposition. The following day the Rifles had continued their advance, once again, without coming into contact with the retreating enemy the battalion that day reaching as far as the high ground to the east of the village of Obies, where the battalion had in effect ended its war. Relieved during the 8TH of November, the Leeds Rifles had duly marched back to the village of Mecquignies, having not been involved in the final advance, and capture of Maubeuge.
By the 11TH of November the Leeds Rifles had been stationed in Mont Plaisir, where following the signing of the Armistice, the Battalion, after cleaning up their billets, had been given the day off. During its four years on the Western Front the Leeds Rifles had lost over 2,000 men killed and many more wounded. Amongst the few British Territorial Force Battalions to serve on German soil, it had been whilst in Germany that the Battalion had been formally decorated with the Croix de Guerre, it being received whilst on parade by Major W.H. Brooke M.C., one of the battalion’s few surviving officers and men who had served with the unit throughout the whole war, and live to tell the tale. [12]
For a couple of days after the death of Rifleman Redman the Third Army had not undertaken any serious operations, due to the formation being at the time busy making preparations for a renewal of the offensive in conjunction with the First and Fourth Armies timed to begin on the 23RDof October on enemy positions known as ‘Herman 1, on the River Selle, and ‘Herman 2’ on the Sambre-Oise, and Schelde Canals.
Although bearing grandiose names these positions had consisted of two lines of poorly constructed trenches in between the two canals that had been protected by two lines of barbed wire and numerous machine gun positions sited in the nearby fields and orchards of a battlefield that had borne little resemblance to the customary wasteland of the Western Front that had resembled the thickly hedged Bocage country of Normandy that would be the cause many problems to the Allies during 1944 in the latter stages of the second war in Europe.
The British attack had duly begun during the early hours of the 23RD, the Third Army obtaining all its objectives without too much opposition except heavy machine gun fire from the village of Poix du Nord in the ‘Herman 2’ position, and the village of Beaurain, which had eventually subdued by mortar fire. Nevertheless, despite these pockets of resistance Third Army had advanced over three miles by the fall of night to arrive on the threshold of the massive Mormal Forest.
The following day, Thursday the 24TH of October, the advance had continued. The major problem facing troops engaged in this day’s operation had been the crossing the River Ecaillon, a twenty feet wide by four feet deep watercourse, that in many places had either been waded or swam by the attacking troops. Amongst the Battalions that had forded the river in these ways had been the 1ST Battalion of Princess Charlotte of Wales’s Own [Royal Berkshire Regiment]. A pre war regular army unit, the battalion had been a part to the 99TH Brigade of the 2ND Division, which in turn, had, like the Leed’s Rifles, been attached to Sixth Corps of Third Army. Although still considered as a regular army unit, by late 1918 the 1ST Berkshires had lost the majority of the regular soldiers that had arrived in France as part of ‘that contemptible little army’ known as the B.E.F., that had seen action in the nearby fields close to the village of Mons, during the summer of 1914. Moustachioed almost to a man, the ‘old sweats’ had fallen by the wayside in one way or another to be, inevitably, replaced by the thousands of eighteen and nineteen year olds that had become the backbone of the British army of 1918.
In assembly positioned near to the village of Vertain, during the early hours of the 24TH, at 4am the Berkshires had begun their advance behind a creeping barrage. Finding the Ecaillon deeper than expected the men of the Battalion had been forced to wade the river, the water coming up to their waists. However, despite this first setback the unit had eventually completed its crossing, emerging near to the village of Ruesnes, which had been taken without firing a shot. Facing the Battalion at this point had been a steep climb up a ridge to the east of the village and upon reaching the top the men had been assailed by an intense hail of enemy machine gun fire coming from the direction of the village of Parquiax. Nevertheless, Despite this machine gun fire, the Berkshires had continued their advance to eventually take their objective, the village of Bermerain, having completed a total advance of around 4,000 yards over difficult country and completed the crossing of two rivers, taken over 300 prisoners along with 10 machine guns along the way. Later that afternoon the Germans had mounted a concerted counter attack on the Berkshires positions, this had, however been broken up, having failed to make little progress, by their rifle, and machine gun fire.
The Berkshires had continued their advance the following day, patrols from the unit reaching as far as Villers Pol without being fired on by rifles or machine guns, by 6pm on the 25TH the Battalion had established a number of posts near to the village where the men had spent an uncomfortable night with the enemy trying to shell them out of their dugouts.
During the early hours of Saturday the 26TH of October ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies of the 1ST Berkshire had been relieved by two companies of the Somerset Light Infantry, whilst ‘C’ and ‘D’ had been taken over by the 1ST King’s Royal Rifle Corps, the Battalion moving back to encamp at the eastern end of Bermerain where the unit had spent the rest of the day ‘resting and reorganising. Whilst there the Battalion had conducted the customary post battle calling of the unit’s roll, which had established that during the preceding two days of action the unit had lost four officers wounded, whilst the other ranks had suffered10 men killed, sixty six wounded, and an additional seven men listed as ‘missing’. Amongst those who had lost their lives during these operations had been yet another of Scarborough’s nineteen years old sons; 506760 Private Richard Michael Fitzpatrick.
Also born in the town, during the December Quarter of 1899, ‘Dick’ had been the only son of Alice Margaret, and ‘bricklayers labourer’ Richard Michael Fitzpatrick, who had been residing in Scarborough at No.17 William Street at the time of their son’s death. [13]
A former pupil of Scarborough’s St Peters Roman Catholic School, and the Central Board School, at the age of thirteen Richard had left formal education to become an errand boy for fish, game, and poultry dealers the Smith Brothers, whose shop had been located in Scarborough at No.30 Huntriss Row.
Fitzpatrick had eventually enlisted into the army at Richmond during March 1918 to serve as a Private [Regimental Number 35872] in the Northumberland Fusiliers. Initially attached for training to the regiment’s 3RD [Reserve] Battalion, Richard had eventually wound up in the Territorial Force 2ND/4TH Battalion, which had been engaged on ‘home service’ with the 217TH Brigade of the 72ND Division. Fitzpatrick had remained with this unit until its disbandment during late May 1918. Subsequently sent back to the Northumberland Fusiliers Depot at Newcastle until September 1918 to await a posting, the youngster had shortly been sent for training in France, in one of the notorious ‘Bull Rings’ that had dotted the Northern French beaches near the town of Etaples. At ‘Eat Apples’ until the beginning of October 1918, Fitzpatrick had duly been posted to the 1ST Battalion of the Berkshire Regiment, joining his unit amongst a draft of fifty four other ranks ‘on the Somme’ at Flesquieres during Friday the 11TH of October 1918.
Commanded at the time by Lieutenant Colonel D.W. Powell [Powell would be replaced on the 15TH of October by Lieutenant Colonel J.A. Southey], the First Berkshire had remained at Flesquieres until the 13TH of October, when the battalion had received orders to move to the village of Wambaix. Arriving at midday, the men, according to the Battalion’s ‘War Diary’, had found their ‘billets very dirty and full of debris, [which] after being cleared out were made very comfortable, a large percentage of the men having beds’…[14]
The next day the battalion had begun a training regime that had lasted until Sunday the 20TH of October, when the unit had moved to the nearby village of Carnieres, where the Battalion had spent the following day resting and playing platoon football competitions during the afternoon. This had been the last day of peace for the unit for during the afternoon of the following day the 1ST Berkshires had made a move to St Hilaire, where the battalion had been billeted in the local sugar beet factory. During that rain washed night the unit had been placed on two hours notice to go into action.
At 11am on Wednesday the 23RD of October the 1ST Battalion had received orders to be prepared to make a move at 1pm that day. Shortly afterwards these orders had been confirmed and the battalion had duly marched off by platoons to an area to the east of St Python, where orders had subsequently been received for the unit to move to the west of Vertain, where the men had rested whilst Colonel Southey had proceeded to Brigade H.Q. in the village to be issued with orders for his unit to move forward to relieve the 2ND Highland Light Infantry ‘at once’ in order to mount an assault early the next day. That night Private Fitzpatrick and the remainder of his battalion had been issued with rations and ammunition for the operations that was to begin in a few hours time. The men had also been served with a hot meal before moving off at 8-15 that night to meet the guides that would lead them towards their objective the next day.
Officially reported as killed in action during Thursday the 24TH of October 1918, the news of Richard’s death had reached Alice Fitzpatrick six days before the Armistice. The news had subsequently been included in a casualty list that had appeared in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 8TH of November;
‘Boy soldier killed by German airman - Mrs. R. Fitzpatrick, 17 William Street, has received news that her only son, Private R. Fitzpatrick, has been killed by machine gun fire from a German plane. He was just over 19 years of age and was sent to France after four months training. He was formerly employed by Messrs. Smith Brothers, Huntriss Row. His father has been three years in India and has now been sent elsewhere without a leave’…
Amongst nine other ranks of the 1ST Battalion of the Berkshire Regiment that had been killed in action during the 24TH of October, the remains of the majority of these men had been taken to the village of Vertain, where they had been interred in the Communal Cemetery Extension at that place However, for some unknown reason, those of Richard Fitzpatrick, twenty years old Scottish born 43942Lance Corporal Victor John Powell, and Leeds born 220665 Private Harry Stevens [also aged 20 years at the time of his death], had been taken to nearby Romeries where the remains of the three young soldiers had been interred in that village’s Communal Cemetery Extension. Located around sixteen kilometres south of Valenciennes and four kilometres to the east of Solemes, Romeries Communal Cemetery Extension is situated on the west side of the village, on the north side of the road leading to Solesmes, and contains the graves of over eight hundred casualties of the Great War [129 of these burials are unidentified]. Richard Fitzpatrick’s final resting place is located in Section 1, Row F, Grave 9, alongside that of Private Stevens [1/F/10].
A year after the death of Private Fitzpatrick, on Friday the 24TH of October 1919, the lengthy ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths’ column of that day’s ‘Scarborough Mercury’ had included an epitaph to the fallen soldier;
‘In loving memory of our dear son and brother, Dick R.M. Fitzpatrick, killed in action October 24TH, 1918’…We never dreamed it was his last good bye as he marched away so bravely, his young head so proudly held, his footsteps never faltered, his courage never failed, when on the field he calmly took his place. He fought and died for Britain, and the honour of his race. —Ever remembered by his sorrowing mother, father, and sisters, 17 William Street’…
In addition to the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Richard Michael Fitzpatrick’s name can also be found in Scarborough on the Parish Roll of Honour located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s Parish Church. In addition, it is also included on the marble cross of remembrance memorial to be found outside St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, which commemorates thirty one members of the church who had lost their lives whilst on active service during the war of 1914-18, eleven of the Second World War [including 19 years old Private Mary Sadler of the Auxiliary Territorial Service], and one casualty from 1950. [15]
At the end of the war ‘Dick’s father, Richard Michael Fitzpatrick had returned to Scarborough after service with the Royal Army Medical Corps [Regimental Number 114025], to live at No.17 William Street until his death on Thursday the 26TH of June 1930, at the age of 55 years. Richard’s remains had duly been interred in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery on the 28TH of June in a grave situated in Section G, Row 22, [Grave 1] which had already contained the remains of youngest daughter Alice Margaret, who had tragically passed away, also at No.17 William Street, on Sunday the 26TH of March 1922, at the age of twenty. The gravestone marking father and daughter’s final resting place, in addition to containing the name of Private Fitzpatrick, also bears the name of his mother, Alice Margaret Fitzpatrick, who had passed away on Thursday the 10TH of September 1942, at the age of sixty-nine years.
By the 11TH of November 1918 the 1ST Battalion of the Berkshire Regiment had reached the French village of Escarmain, from where, at 9am that day, all ranks under the age of thirty five years had embarked on a four mile cross country run. When the men had returned they had found the war had ended at 11am. That afternoon the battalion had played a game of football against the 6TH Ambulance; the unit had lost 1-0 to the medics.
To the right [south] of Third Army, Sir Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army had also launched an assault on the 23RD of October. Consisting of two Corps, the Fourth’s primary task had been the defence of the right flank of the main thrust to be made by Third Army, which would see the formation’s 9TH Corps making an advance of two miles to the banks of the Sambre Canal, whilst its 13TH Corps had been ordered to secure the Landrecies- Englefontaine road, which had entailed an advance of over five miles. ‘Zero Hour’ for the start of the operation had been set for 1-20am on the 23RD, and at the appointed time despite poor visibility, the assault had begun. Twenty three tanks had been assigned to Fourth Army their main task had been to force their way through the thick hedgerows to provide gateways for the infantry. These hedgerows had caused many problems at the outset of the venture causing the infantry to lose the cover of their protective creeping barrage. Thankfully opposition had been patchy and the attack had gained all its objectives with very little loss, except for the tank force, many of which had become casualties, mainly due to ditching and mechanical failure.
Fourth Army’s assault had continued on the 25TH of October. That day 9TH Corps, on the right flank, had found that the enemy had retreated to the eastern bank of the Sambre, and had once again seen little action. On the left of the attack, however, the 13TH Corps had seen some very heavy during their course of the day. Faced with the incredibly thick belts of wire protecting the defensive positions of the Hermann 2 Line, the men of 13TH Corps had nonetheless eventually forced their way through at a great cost in lives, and had then been engaged in much vicious hand to hand fighting. By the end of the day Fourth Army had achieved the majority of its objectives having reached the banks of the Sambre and like Third Army, had come within a mile of the great forest of Mormal, the last natural barriers before the Germans last line of defence, the ‘Antwerp-Meuse Position’.
Amongst the various units that had been attached to 9TH Corps of Fourth Army during this crucial stage of the war had been the 1ST Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. Better known as ‘The Buffs’, the Battalion had been attached to the 16TH Brigade of the 6TH Division, and had taken part in most of the major operations of the war on the Western Front since it had landed in France during September 1914. However, like the 1ST Royal Berkshire, the unit had by October 1918 borne little resemblance to the magnificent battalion of Regular Army officers and men who had set foot on foreign soil at St Nazaire to take part in the greatest war the world had thus far seen, that would more than two fold claim the lives of the battalion’s complement during the ensuing four years of strife.
Given the task of capturing a fortified farm near to the hamlet of Happegarbes on Wednesday the 30TH of October, ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies of the 1ST Buffs had begun their assault at 6am that morning the two units had advanced behind the cover of a creeping barrage, which had caused a number of casualties amongst the attackers. Nevertheless, the two companies and had eventually reached their objective, only to be driven out by a heavy enemy trench mortar and artillery barrage. The Germans had followed up their artillery attack with an assault by infantry, which, although driven home by force, had been repelled by the Buffs Lewis Gunners and riflemen. Later that day reinforcements had been brought up and the Battalion had mounted another attack, which, on that occasion, had been completely successful, the unit capturing all its objectives at the point of the bayonet.
During this operation the 1ST Buffs had lost one officer and eight other ranks killed in action, one officer and twenty seven men wounded, one officer and one other rank slightly wounded, whilst a further four other ranks had been reported as missing. Amongst the dead had been thirty two years old; 14922 Private John William Warwick.
Born in Scarborough at No.108 Victoria Road, on Wednesday the 5TH of May 1886, John had been the youngest son of Mary and ‘Master Butcher’ John Warwick. [16]
A former pupil of the Central Board School, and allegedly, Scarborough’s Municipal School, John had left education at the age of thirteen to take his place as an errand boy in the family butchery business, which had been located on the corner of Hanover Road and Victoria Road, downstairs from the family home at No.108 Victoria Road.
[Mary and eldest son, George Herbert Warwick, had continued to carry on the family business at this location until the late 1920’s when a James Edward Little had taken over the premises. However, by the start of 1930 George Horsley had opened a butchery business at this address until it had been taken over by son Thomas Stephen Horsley who had traded at 108 Victoria Road until the late 1990’s when Scarborough’s premier family butchers had moved across the road. In 2007 the Warwick’s former shop goes under the name of ‘Anna’s takeaway sandwich bar’].
A qualified butcher by the outbreak of war, John Warwick had initially been exempt from military service, nevertheless, following the devastating losses that had been inflicted on the B.E.F. during the first two years of the war, Warwick, like many other men, who had previously been exempt, or considered too old for service, had found himself being conscripted into the army following the introduction during March 1916 of the Military Service Act, that in the ensuing two years would ‘call up’ over two million British males between the ages of eighteen and forty one years of age for service in the country’s’ armed forces.
Following his enlistment at Scarborough during March 1916, Warwick had been sent for training with the Territorial Force 2ND/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment [Regimental Number 5622] which had been serving in the north of England as part of Britain’s coastal defence force. Warwick had remained with this unit until the beginning of August 1916, when he had been sent to France to serve with the 1ST/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, which by this stage of the war had been a veteran battalion with over two years of service on the Western Front under its belt.
Attached to the 150TH Brigade of 50TH [Northumbrian] Division, by the time that Warwick had joined the unit, the 1ST/5TH Yorks had been still been stationed in the same Flanders soil where the battle had undergone its terrible ‘baptism of fire’ at St Julien, and endure the terrors of the remainder of the Second Battle of Ypres the previous year [between the 22ND of April and the 25TH of May 1915 the Battalion had lost over thirty men killed and over a hundred wounded]. In trenches in the dreaded Ypres Salient at a place called Eecke, a village a few miles to the north west of the town of Baillieul, where the battalion had been serving in the nearby front line. Where, despite having escaped the slaughter of the opening stages of the Somme Offensive, Warwick and the remainder of the Battalion had not been afforded a quiet life. An unnamed soldier of the Battalion would later recall…
’Shelling, mortaring, machine gun fire, and sniping occurred at all times of the day and night; no part of the line was ever free from one or the other. Patrol work was assiduous: casualties were sometimes heavy and, at other times extremely light, but generally speaking there were no untoward incidents and those months spent in the Ypres trenches and at Kemmel may be written down as quiet’…[17]
Heavy casualties on the Somme had ensured the 1ST/5TH Yorks had been sent southwards to take their place in the Offensive, and by the 10TH of September 1916 Warwick and his comrades had been in positions in ‘Lozenge Wood’, awaiting the call to take their places in the ‘Third Battle of the Somme‘. Involved in the successful operations between High Wood and the village of Martinpuich, that had cost the battalion over one hundred and fifty casualties during the four days that the unit had been in action. Amongst the battalion’s wounded eleven officers and one hundred and sixty two other ranks, Private Warwick had been reported as having been injured in his right shoulder and arm in a casualty list that had appeared in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 10TH of November 1916, by which time he had been evacuated to a military hospital in ‘blighty’.
With his wounds healed, after a period of home leave Warwick had been posted to the Yorkshire Regiment’s Depot at Richmond where he had undergone a period of training with the Lewis Gun. Weighing just twenty six pounds and with a length of fifty inches the Lewis light machine gun could be considered more of a rifle than a machine gun. Compact and virtually without recoil the weapon could, in the right hands, be fired from the hip. One short squeeze of the trigger fired one round, and if it were held it continued to fire until the ammunition drum, containing forty seven rounds had been emptied. In skilled hands the Lewis could, if it did not jam in the process, fire 550 rounds in one minute. A proficient Lewis Gunner at the end of the four weeks course, Warwick had emerged from the Depot wearing the coveted ‘L.M.G.’ badge surrounded by laurel leaves on his left sleeve, that would set him apart from the ordinary rifle carrying ‘Tommie Atkins’, and also ensure that he had marched at the rear of the column with the remainder of the battalion’s ‘iddy umpties’, his gear generally being carried in a handcart, or limber.
Out of action until the early part of 1917, Warwick had rejoined his unit near Arras in time to take part in the Battle of Arras. Not involved in the initial operations known as the ‘First Battle of the Scarpe’ that the remainder of 50TH Division had taken part, the 5TH Yorks had nonetheless taken their place in the subsequent ‘Second Battle of the Scarpe’, when on the 23RD and 24TH of April 1917 the battalion had once again seen heavy fighting, losing almost two hundred officers and men killed, wounded, or missing during those two days.
Also a veteran of the Third Battle of Ypres [31 July –10 November 1917] Warwick had taken parting numerous operations during ‘Third Wipers’ notably the Second Battle of Passchendaele [26 October-10 November], during which the battalion had been involved in operations near to the Houthoulst Forest during the night of the 30/31 October, which, inevitably, had once caused many casualties amongst the 5TH Yorkshire. Warwick had remained in the Ypres Salient throughout the bitter winter of 1917/18. However, during February 1918 his severely depleted battalion had marched away from the infamous Salient, never to return.
Involved in the German Offensive of the spring of 1918, by the beginning of April 1918 Warwick and his comrades had been in an area of Northern France near to the city of Bethune. Brought up to strength by this time due to large influxes of replacements, the battalion had shortly taken a part in the German Offensive on the Lys. Involved in the most desperate fighting that had taken place near to the banks of the river between the 9TH and 12TH of April, by the time that the 5TH Yorks had been relieved during the night of the twelfth the unit had lost over three hundred of its officers and men.
Once again sorely depleted by vicious fighting [a more detailed account of the 5TH Battalion’s trials on the Lys appears elsewhere in the text], by late April the 50TH Division had been sent to rest in the Chemin des Dames sector near to the Aisne River. Considered as a relatively peaceful sector of the Western Front, during the early hours of the 27TH of May the ‘peace’ had be shattered by a gigantic artillery bombardment of the combined British and French positions with gas and high explosive shells that had cut a swathe through the Allied positions like the proverbial hot knife through butter, leaving nothing but a devastated line of trenches and dugouts. Occupying trenches on the exposed Plateau de Californie, the 5TH Battalion, along with the remainder of the British forces had stood little chance on the face of the following concerted assault made by masses of German infantry, and despite mounting a fierce rearguard action the few remaining Yorkshiremen had been forced to quit their positions leaving the majority of their comrades, either dead, or taken prisoner, behind.
Having lost over 600 of its men on the 27TH of May the 5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment had ceased to exist as a fighting unit, the handful of the Battalion’s survivors, including Private Warwick, being formed into a ‘Composite Force’, that had taken no further active part in the war. Many of the former 5TH Yorks, including Warwick, had shortly been posted to other regiments, many that had had no connection whatsoever with the County of Yorkshire. Amongst a number of men posted to the 1ST Battalion of the Buffs at the beginning of July 1918, Private Warwick had duly exchanged his ‘Eiffel Tower’ Yorkshire Regimental cap badge for the dragon emblem of his new regiment.
With a history dating back to 1572, the First Battalion of the Buffs had been one of the oldest battalion’s in the British Army at the outbreak of war in August 1914. Stationed at the time at Fermoy in Ireland, the unit had formed part of the 15TH Brigade of 6TH Division and had landed at St Nazaire with this formation on the 10TH of September 1914 in time to take part in the Battle of Aisne [12TH – 15TH September].
Involved in every other major offensive on the Western Front since, by July 1918 the Battalion [commanded by Lieutenant Colonel R.E. Power] had been stationed in France whilst serving with 9TH Corps of 3RD Army.
A veteran of the Battle of Epehy [September 18TH] and the subsequent Battle of the St. Quentin Canal [29TH-2 October], the news of John Warwick’s death had reached his mother in the form of a letter written by a comrade, that Mary Warwick had received during Thursday the 7TH of November 1918, just four days before the Armistice. The tidings had been included in the following day’s edition of ‘The Scarborough Mercury’;
‘Killed in action - Information was received from a comrade yesterday that Private J.W. Warwick, son of Mrs. Warwick, and brother of Mr. [George Herbert] Warwick, butcher, Victoria Road, was killed in action on October 30TH. He had been in the army about 2 years. Deceased, who was 32 years of age, was an old Municipal School boy’…
The Warwick family had heard no further news of the fate of John until after the war, when the War Office had officially confirmed that he had been killed in action during Wednesday the 30TH of October 1918. ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 22ND of November had reported;
‘Lewis Gunner killed - It is officially confirmed that Private John Warwick was killed in action on October 30TH. He was formerly with the 5TH Yorks., but was transferred to the 1ST East Kents after the 27TH of May and met his death as a Lewis Gunner. Before joining the army he worked with his brother as a butcher in Victoria Road’…
The same newspaper had included the following in its ‘Births, Marriages, and Deaths column;
‘Warwick—Killed in action, in France on October 30TH 1918, John William Warwick, second son of the late John Warwick and Mary Warwick, of Scarborough, aged 32’…
Long before the 22ND of November the remains of Private Warwick, and six other soldiers belonging to the 1ST Buffs, had been taken to the small town of Landrecies, in Northern France, where they had been interred in a cemetery to the west to the west of the town known as ‘Landrecies British Cemetery’. Located a little to the south of the D 959 road leading to Le Cateau, Landrecies British Cemetery holds the graves of over one hundred and fifty casualties [over 10 of these remain unidentified] of the fighting that had taken place in the nearby fields between October and the Armistice. John Warwick’s final resting place is located in Section C, Grave 2, close to those of fellow 1ST Buffs [C 9 and 10 respectively]; 14936 Private Walter John Lambeth, a twenty two years old who had also lost his life on the 30TH of October, and G/3961 Lance Sergeant James Henry Smith, a holder of the Distinguished Conduct, and Military Medals, who had been killed in action during the 29TH of October 1918.
[The ‘Soldiers died in the War’ database records the names of nine men belonging to the 1ST Buffs that had lost their lives during the 30TH of October, the remains of the majority of these men had been interred in Landrecies British Cemetery, except for those of; G/15019 Lance Corporal John Tupper who had died of wounds in Germany on that date, and G/14952 Private Frederick James Woodward, a nineteen years old whose body had never been recovered from the battlefield. His name is commemorated on the Memorial to the Missing at Vis en Artois].
Apart from the Oliver’s Mount Memorial, John Warwick’s name is not included on any of the town’s surviving church memorials. Nevertheless, a former member of the congregation of Aberdeen Walk’s Jubilee Primitive Methodist Chapel, John’s name had been included on a large marble tablet that had been sculptured by Mr. Fred Webster, and unveiled in the porch of the chapel by Councillor William Boyes during the afternoon of Wednesday the 9TH of March 1921. Containing the names of fourteen members of the chapel that had lost their lives during the Great War of 1914-19, the memorial had also borne the names of sixty members of the congregation that had served during the war and had lived to tell the tale. Opened during 1861, the once magnificent Jubilee Chapel had been demolished during the 1960’s to make way for ‘Kwik Save Supermarket’. In 2007 Scarborough’s ‘Job Centre’ occupies the site. Sadly, the whereabouts of the church war memorial is not known.
The former Scarborough butcher is also remembered upon a fine red marble gravestone in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section P. Row 22, Grave 4] that also bears the names of John Warwick senior, who had died at the age of thirty one years on the 8TH of January 1889, and John’s mother, Mary Warwick, who survived her husband by over fifty years to pass away at her home at No.8 Victoria Parade, at the age of eighty five years on Sunday the 7TH of December 1941. The memorial also bears the name of the Warwick’s only daughter, Alice Hannah Warwick. Also formally of No.8 Victoria Parade, Alice Warwick had died at No.4 Harcourt Avenue [the home of nephew Leslie, and Minnie Warwick] on Tuesday the 16TH of October 1956, at the age of seventy four years.
Although unmarried at the time of his death, two years later the ‘In Memoriam’ section of ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 29TH of October 1920 had included the following dedication for John Warwick from an unknown admirer;
‘In loving remembrance of my dear friend John William Warwick, killed in action, October 30TH 1918—L.D’....
Relieved by the 15TH Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers during the evening of the 30TH of October, the First Buffs had duly marched to billets in the village of St. Souplet to take no further active part in the war. By the 11TH of November the Battalion had been stationed in trenches near to the village of Bohain, where, within minutes of the Armistice coming into effect, G/26249 Private Joseph Barker Parish, had died from the effects of wounds received the previous day, thus becoming the last of 142 officers and 4,220 other ranks of the 1ST Buffs that had become casualties of the war between 1914 and 1918.
Whilst the British Third and Fourth Armies had advanced across French soil towards the various locations in which they would witness the end of the war, further to the north, in Flanders field, Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army had been undertaking its own operations towards a final victory on Belgian soil.
Popularly known by his men as ‘Old Plum Jam’, Plumer’s Army had consisted of four Corps [2ND, 10TH, 15TH, and 19TH] and had begun its final advance on the 26TH of September with the opening of the Battle of Ypres 1918. Two days later Second Army, together with the Belgian Army had launched a combined attack in the area of Ypres that had extended from Clerken in the north, to the Ypres-Comines Canal in the south, the main objectives of the Belgian Army being the capture of the Ypres Ridge that runs from the village of Staden through Passchendaele, to Broodseinde, the boundary with Second Army, which had been given the task of assaulting the remainder of the ridge as far as the Ypres- Comines Canal, a mile to the north of Hollebeke.
A battlefield with bitter memories of the appalling loss of life suffered by the British Army during the bloody operations of 1917 known as ‘Third Wipers’. That blood-soaked ground had witnessed British and Commonwealth forces taking over four months in the most appalling of conditions, to reach the piles of rubble that had once been the village of Passchendaele, an operation that by its end had cost the lives of over a quarter of a million men. Still filled with decaying trench systems, rusting barbed wire entanglements, and all kinds of other detritus of the fighting of 1917, the assault on the field of battle facing Plumer’s men must have initially seemed a daunting task, however, unknown to the British, unlike 1917, by this stage of the war the Ypres Ridge had not been held in strength by the enemy [only five divisions of infantry], and unlike the previous year, the resolve of the German soldier had all but disintegrated.
The primary direction of Second Army’s attack had been astride the Ypres-Menin road. In the centre, and on the right flank Tenth and fifteenth Corps had been ordered ‘to watch their opportunity and take every advantage of the enemy weakening on their front to press his retirement’, whilst the Army’s other two Corps, Second and Nineteenth, had mounted the main assault. Beginning their attack at 5.30am on the 28TH without the aid of a preliminary bombardment, the four Divisions of infantry belonging to the two formations [two other had been held in reserve] had found little opposition and had swept onwards to gain all their objectives by that afternoon and establish a line from Broodseinde all the way to Kortewilde on the Ypres – Comines Canal, an advance of around four miles. However, further to the south patrols belonging to Tenth and Fifteenth Corps had met with stiffer opposition, but had nevertheless, managed to make a significant advance. Meanwhile, in the northern sector, the nine divisions of Belgian infantry belonging to King Albert and General Degoutte, had advanced simultaneously following preliminary bombardment of the enemy’s positions that had lasted three hours. Racing through the once formidable Houthulst Forest [taking four lines of enemy trenches in the process], and onwards to Passchendaele, the Belgians had taking the village once and for all that same day without too much trouble. By the end of the day both forces had made an advance of around five miles.
The combined attack had continued the next day, however, by this time the customary heavy Flanders rain had begun to make progress more difficult. A particular problem had been the re-supply of the assault troops, who, by the 2ND of October, had begun to run out of food. To alleviate the problem eighty aircraft had been used to drop 15,000 small sacks each containing five or ten packs padded with earth to break their fall when flung out of the aircraft. The first occasion in history where troops in the field had been re-supplied from the air, over thirteen tons of stores had been dropped during the operation that day.
Despite the massive gains that had been achieved by this combined assault, the ravaged state of the Flanders countryside had become a serious obstacle in the way of much further progress, therefore, with the British just two miles from Menin, it had been decided by the High Command, that on the 2ND of October the Battle of Ypres should be closed down. By this time the British had lost 4, 695 men killed and wounded, whilst the Belgian Army had suffered around 4,500 casualties. However, between them the two Armies had captured some 10,000 prisoners, 300 guns, and over 600 machine guns.
Second Army had resumed operations on the 14TH of October. Eventually named ‘The Battle of Coutrai’, the Army’s task had been the protection of the right flank of an advance that had been made that day by units of the French and Belgian armies towards the capture of Roulers and a follow up advance towards Thielt, and the city of Ghent. Plumer had given orders for his 19TH, 20TH, and 2ND Corps to advance to the River Lys [15TH Corps had already been in the vicinity], where, if this had been successful, they were to cross to establish bridgeheads on the southern side of the river.
Zero Hour had been set for 5-35am on the 14TH of October and at the appointed hour Second Army, without a preliminary bombardment of the enemy’s positions, had begun its advance. Following in the wake of a creeping barrage, and without the assistance of tanks the various units involved in the operation had made good headway despite meeting some stiff opposition from a number of fortified farmhouses and pillboxes, and by the end of the day’s fighting almost all objectives had been achieved. The line of the Lys, had, however, not been reached, and the attack had been resumed the next day.
On the 15TH of October Second Army’s Fifteen Corps, on the right of the assault, had crossed the Lys to capture the town of Comines, which had found to be already evacuated by the enemy, whilst in the centre, Tenth Corps had also found its objective, the shattered village of Menin abandoned, the retreating Germans having blown up the bridges that crossed the in their wake. On the left flank, 2ND and 19TH Corps, in spite of strong opposition, had reached the line of the Courtrai- Roulers railway, although the Anglo French Belgium force further to the north had been unable to keep pace. The advance had continued over the ensuing four days, the towns of Tourcoing, Roubaix, and Courtrai falling to the Allies. On the 17TH of October the Belgians had retaken Ostend, whilst on the 19TH of October the entire front of Second Army had crossed the Lys, the same day that the towns of Zeebrugge and Bruges had been liberated, and the Battle of Courtrai had ended.
By the 20TH of October ‘Old Plum Jam’s’ Army had reached a waterlogged piece of Belgium between the Lys and the Schelde, that in the days to come, would see much heavy fighting and eventually the ending of the war;
‘The watershed between the Schelde and the Lys over which the Second Army had now to cross is a long flattish ridge, with its axis nearer to the Schelde than the Lys, dotted with farms and labourers cottages, each with its own garden and cellar. This ridge has many spurs on both sides; so from southwest to north east the ground presents a serried of small rises, some of them of sufficient military importance to be them selves called ridges. It is traversed by the Bossuyt-Courtrai Canal, on whose north eastern side are a number of streams, then in flood, and in their vicinity particularly between Courtrai and Deerlyck, was marshy; but the whole surface, owing to recent rain, was heavy going’…[19]
Despite the difficulties of the terrain, 2ND Army had continued its operations on the 20TH of October. During that day the various units belonging to the formation had begun their approach to the Schelde Canal where they had met with tough opposition from an until then, unknown heavily wired German system of trenches known to the enemy as the ‘Courtrai Switch’. Extending from the town of Helchin on the Schelde to the east of Courtrai on the Lys, despite stiff opposition the Courtrai Switch had eventually been overcome, but efforts to bridge the Schelde had been severely hampered by enemy shellfire. Severe fighting in this area had continued for the next three days.
On the 25TH of October 2ND Army had begun an operation aimed at reaching as far as the Schelde that would eventually become known as ‘The Action at Ooteghem’ during which the Germans had mounted a number of severe counterattacks that had managed to retrieve some lost ground. Still four miles from the Schelde.
During the 26TH and 27TH of Octobers Second Army’s 2ND and 19TH Corps, in conjunction with the French 8TH Corps, had mounted a concerted attack that had eventually seen the two formations driving their foe all the way to the east bank of the Schelde.
Second Army’s operations had continued on Thursday the 31ST of October, a day when Second Army’s 19TH and 2ND Corps, once again in conjunction with French forces, had pushed forwards to successfully reach the west bank of the Schelde. Amongst the units that had taken part in these operations had been the 19TH [Service] Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry. A part of 104TH Brigade of 35TH Division [which had been attached to 19TH Corps], during the previous night the men of this battalion had been stationed in the front line to the north of the village of Avelghem. However, during the early hours of the thirtieth first they had taken part in an operation known as ‘The action of Tiegham’, that had begun at 5-25am on that last that foggy day of October. The Battalion’s ‘War Dairy’ briefly records of that day; [20]
‘October 31ST 5.25am. The 104TH Infantry Brigade attacked with 19TH Durham Light Infantry on the right, 17TH Lancashire Fusiliers in centre, and 18TH Lancashire Fusiliers on left. Zero was at 5.25am. By 10.30am all objectives were taken and Rugge Trappelsstraat, Waermaerde, Tenhove, and Kerkhove were in our hands. The success was exploited later in the day as far as Eeuwhoek. About 350 prisoners were taken. Our casualties amounted to four officers and 98 other ranks’…amongst these had been thirty six years old; 75537 Lance Corporal William George Duck.
Born at No.41 Tyne Street in the North Yorkshire town of Loftus on the 18TH of September 1882, William had been the eldest son of Rebecca and ‘stonemason’ George Duck. A worker in the grocery trade for much of his life, by April 1901 [the time of the 1901 Census] Duck had been working as a ‘Grocer Assistant’ whilst residing with grandparents, Jane and William Brignall at No.32 Tees Street Loftus. [18]
Although working in York by 1905, on Monday the 24TH of April of that year the twenty two years old William Duck had been married at Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church to ‘domestic servant’, Roes Major, the Scarborough born twenty five years old youngest daughter of Mary Jane, and ‘carver and guilder’, Henry Charles Major, of No.6 Brook Street Scarborough. Following their marriage William and Rose Duck had returned to York, where their two sons, William Henry ‘Bill’, and George Leslie ‘les’, had eventually been born during 1908 and 1911 respectively.
By the outbreak of war in August 1914, however, William Duck and his family had returned to Scarborough to live at No.28 Brook Street, William being employed at No.1 Clifton Street by the ‘Clifton Street Aerated Water Company Limited’. Eventually conscripted into the Army under the Military Act of 1916, during late 1916 William Duck had enlisted into the Durham Light Infantry at the Yorkshire Regimental Depot at Richmond, North Yorkshire during December 1916, and had initially served with the regiment’s 3RD [Reserve] Battalion, however, by the time that he had reached foreign soil during December 1917, he had been transferred to the Nineteenth Battalion.
Formed at West Hartlepool on the 13TH of January 1915 by the Durham Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the 19TH Durhams had originally been designated as a ‘Bantam’ Battalion [composed of men under the standard 5 feet three inches in stature] that had initially landed in France during late January early February 1916 as part of the 106TH Brigade of the 35TH Division. However, by the time that Private Duck had joined the unit it had lost its ‘Bantam’ uniqueness, due mainly to severe losses incurred during the latter stages of the Somme Offensive, to become a standard British Army Battalion manned by standard sized soldiers.
By the time that William Duck had joined 19TH D.L.I. the unit had been serving in the Poelcappelle Sector of the dreaded Ypres Salient, where Private Duck had spent his first and last Christmas on the Western Front. Subsequently involved in the early stages of German Spring Offensive of 1918, Duck’s unit had been moved to Northern France to join 7TH Corps, with which the 19TH D.L.I. had seen much fighting near Bapaume during the 24TH and 25TH of March.
Eventually moved back to Belgium and Second Army during June 1918 in time to take part in the final Allied advance in Flanders, Duck [by this time promoted to Lance Corporal], and his comrades had taken part in ‘The Battle of Ypres 1918’,
[Which had lasted from the 28TH of September to the 2ND of October], during which, on the 1ST of October, they had taken part in an abortive attack on an enemy position known as the ‘Gheluwe Switch’, during which the 19TH Battalion had been held up, according to the unit’s War Diary, by ‘a strong line of pillboxes, entanglements, and heavy machine gun fire’. However, during the subsequent Battle of Courtrai [14TH-19TH October], the 19TH D.L.I. had taken part in a more successful operation on the opening day of the battle when the Battalion had assisted with the capture of an enemy position known as ‘Tamil Farm’, nevertheless, during this action the unit had suffered over one hundred casualties.
Throughout the ensuing few remaining days of his life William Duck had taken his place in the rapidly closing war. At 7am on the 20TH of October he had taken part in an assault on ‘Kreupel Crest’ a low-lying ridge to the south west of the West Flanders village of Sweveghem. The action that Duck had taken part in that day is once again described in the 19TH’s War Diary’… ‘On the front of the 19TH D.L.I. a strong resistance from machine gun fire was encountered, the enemy using more artillery. After the artillery had shelled the ridge, the Battalion advanced, took the objective and moved forward to the second objective. Here they were again held up by heavy machine gun fire from the ‘Kreupel Ridge’. After shelling by our artillery the advance was pushed forward to the crest, and eventually by pushing out patrols, secured the line of their final objective at 6-30pm. 7 prisoners were captured and the line consolidated’…
Two days later, Lance Corporal Duck and his comrades had been ‘refitting’ in the town of Courtrai. Whilst resting at that place the battalion had received two drafts of replacements for the unit’s battle casualties, and the 19TH’s Commanding Officer, Acting Colonel Albert Rorkfort Mccullagh, had left for England on a month’s tour of duty, his place being taken over by Major B.C.H Keenlyside, formally of the 18TH Lancashire Fusiliers.
On the 27TH of October the 19TH D.L.I. had quit Courtrai to move with the remainder of 104TH Brigade towards the front line to the north of Avelghem, where the formation had relieved a Brigade belonging to the 41ST Division. With 19TH D.L.I. placed in reserve in billets near to the village of Krote, William Duck had spent the last two days of his life in this vicinity until the evening of the 29TH of October, when his unit had moved up to the front line to relieve the 17TH Lancashire Fusiliers, preparatory to launching its attack that would kill the father of three just two days later.
Amongst one officer [Military Cross holder 2ND Lieutenant Francis William Blake] and twenty other ranks of the 19TH Durham Light Infantry that are recorded as having lost their lives during the 31ST of October 1918, the remains of William Duck and those of the majority of his comrades had been buried in battlefield graves, that, at the end of hostilities, had been re interred in a newly created Military Cemetery located near to the village of Vichte. To be found some 40 kilometres to the east of Ypres, and 13 to the east of the town of Kortrijk, Vichte Military Cemetery today holds the graves of over two hundred casualties of the fighting that had taken place in the nearby fields during October/November 1918, Lance Corporal Duck’s final resting place is located in Section 3, Row D, Grave 2. [During the month of October 1918 the 19TH D.L.I. had lost one officer killed, six wounded, whilst the other ranks had lost forty one men killed, two hundred and seventy eight wounded, a further fifty two men had been reported as ‘missing’].
Rose Duck had known nothing of her husband’s demise until well after the Armistice. Having heard no news from William for some time, she had contacted the authorities at the Military Headquarters at York for any information concerning her husband’s whereabouts. Sadly, the news that she had received in return was not for the good.
‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 13TH of December had later reported;
‘Sad news after long interval - The sad news has reached his wife officially that Private William George Duck, 19TH D.L.I., was killed in action on October 31ST. Nothing had been heard of him for five weeks when Mrs. Duck made enquiries thorough the Paymaster and received the information referred to above in response. He went to France on December 11TH last year, and was formerly employed at Clifton Street Aerated Water Manufactory’…
There had been no further information regarding the loss of William George Duck until a year after his death, when the following poignant message had appeared in the ‘In Memoriam’ section of ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 31ST of October 1919;
‘ In loving memory of my dear husband and daddy, Private William G. Duck, Durham Light Infantry, who was killed in action in France, October 31ST 1918.
No one knows how much we miss him. Only we who have lost can tell of the grief that is borne in silence, of a dear daddy we loved so well…
Deeply mourned by his loving wife and sons; Willie, Leslie, Kenneth, 7 Brook Street’…
Following the death of her husband Rose and the couple’s three children, along with Rose’s elder sister, Maria Major, had continued to live in Scarborough at No.7 Brook Street until the 1940’s when the two sisters and three boys had moved into nearby Cambridge Street, to live for many years at No.3. However, by the 1950’s Rose Duck had been residing at No.207 Prospect Road, where, on Tuesday the 24TH of March 1959, she had passed away at the age of seventy seven years. Buried in Scarborough’s Woodlands Cemetery on Saturday the 28TH of March 1959, following a service of Remembrance at St Saviours Church, the remains of Rose Duck had been interred with those of sister Maria Major, who had died on the 8TH of August 1956 at the age of eighty three years.
Amongst the handful of World War One casualties that are commemorated in Scarborough’s Woodlands Cemetery, William George Duck’s name can be found on a grave marker in the Cemetery’s Section K, Row 9, [Grave 3], which also includes the names of his loving wife and sister in law. Whilst also included on the town’s Oliver’s Mount Memorial, Lance Corporal Duck’s name is not commemorated on any of Scarborough’s surviving memorials dedicated to the casualties of the Great War.
Following the death of its twenty men on the 31ST of October, the 19TH Durham Light Infantry had continued with its advance arriving on the 10TH of November near the village of Louise-Marie, where the Battalion had spent that night. The following day the 104TH Brigade had been ordered to continue its advance towards the River Dendre, where the unit had been detailed to ‘secure bridgeheads at Grammont’. The Battalion’s War Diary goes on to report…’just before gaining touch with the enemy, however, a message was received that an armistice had been concluded between the Allied forces and Germany and hostilities ceased at 11am. The Battalion then marched to billets at Everbecq’…[20]
The beginning of November 1918 had seen the German fleet mutiny at its base in Kiel following the circulation of rumours pointing to the German Navy putting to sea to make one last suicidal sortie against the might of the combined British and American Navies. On the 8TH of November, whilst there had been rioting in Munich that had ignited similar disturbances in other German towns and cites, the so-called ‘German Armistice Commission’ had been ushered into a saloon coach in the Forest of Compiegne to hear the Allied terms for the cessation of the war. Foch had demanded that the Germans accept or reject the terms, which had basically called for the evacuation of all occupied territories within fourteen days, the evacuation of the left bank of the Rhine within thirty one days, and the immediate handing over to the Allies of over five thousand artillery pieces, twenty five thousand machine guns, and over one thousand aircraft. The German delegates had then despatched a copy of the Allied demands to German Headquarters located in the town of Spa where Hindenburg had considered his fast dwindling options.
With revolution in the air in Berlin, and his army on the verge of collapse, on the 9TH of November Hindeburg, by this stage badly overcome with emotion, had gone to the Kaiser to report that the army had no longer backed the German leader. Initially outraged by what had been placed before him, Kaiser Wilhelm had nonetheless begun to realise that the game was up. Later that day the Kaiser had abdicated, the following day [the 10TH of November] he had fled to neutral Holland.
Waiting anxiously in the railway carriage at Compiegne, the German Armistice Commission had duly received word that the conditions of the Armistice had been accepted by the German Government. At 2-15am on Monday the 11TH of November the final Armistice signing session had begun, and at 5am that day the German delegates had signed with a declaration that had concluded with the words…
‘The German nation which for fifty months has defied a world of enemies, will preserve, in spite of every kind of violence, its liberty and unity. A nation of seventy millions suffers but does not die’…
Soon after the signing of the Armistice the following telegram had been transmitted along the whole of the Western Front by radio and by telephone to the various Commanders in Chief…
‘1. Hostilities will cease on the entire front on November 11 at 11am, French time’…
‘2. Allied troops are not to pass until further orders beyond the line reached on that day at that hour’…
‘3. All communication with the enemy is forbidden until receipt of instructions by Army Commanders’…
All this had been unknown to the troops on the ground and right up until the specified hour the war had continued. With just two minutes to go before the guns had fallen silent Canadian troops had reached the village of Ville-sur-Haine, just two kilometres short of the tiny town of Mons [the war had begun there in the summer of 1914], where a group of soldiers, including twenty five years old Nova Scotia born 25625 Private George Lawrence Price, had been talking to excited Belgian civilians outside No.7 Rue de Mons. At that moment a single sniper’s shot had shattered the peace of the day killing Private Price outright. Lying in a pool blood seconds away from the end of the war, Private Price had been the last man of the Canadian Expeditionary Force to be killed in action during the war of 1914-1918.
[The son of James E. and Annie R. Price of Port Williams, Kings County, Nova Scotia, the remains of Private Price are interred in Section 5/ Row C/ Grave 4 of St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Northern France].
On the same day that Private Price had lost his life, the widowed mother of yet another Scarborough born soldier had received the dreaded telegram telling of the loss of her precious son; 50550 Private James Wheater Gilbert Raper had been born in the town at No.4 Palace Hill during late 1898 and had been the eldest son of Elizabeth Ellen, and ‘general labourer’ James Allen Raper. [21]
Originally a soldier [Regimental Number 5/8236] in the 90TH Training Reserve Battalion, Raper had been posted to France during January 1918 to serve initially with the 1ST/5TH Battalion of the King’s Own [Yorkshire Light Infantry], which had shortly [February] absorbed the regiment’s 2ND/5TH Battalion to be renamed the 5TH Battalion. Attached to the 187TH Brigade of the 62ND[2ND West Riding] Division by the latter stages of the war 5TH K.O.Y.L.I. had been attached to the Third Army, which by the beginning of November 1918, had been taking part in the Battle of the Selle, an operation which had seen Private Raper lose his life to enemy action during the 3RD of November 1918.
The last soldier known to have been born in Scarborough to be killed in action on the Western Front during the Great War, the news of James Raper’s death had been recorded briefly in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 22ND of November 1918;
‘Killed - Mrs. Raper, 121 Queen’s Parade, has received a letter from an officer that her son Private J. Raper, was killed in action on November 3RD. He was in the K.O.Y.L.I. and formally worked with Mr. [Hugh] Proctor, builder’…
Despite numerous searches of the battlefield before and after the Armistice, the remains of Private James Wheater Gilbert Raper and over nine thousand fellow British, Irish, and South African casualties of the fighting in Picardy and the Artois region of Northern France that had taken place between the 8TH of August and the Armistice had never been found. James’s name along with the 9, 812 missing casualties of this final stage of the war are commemorated on the Vis en Artois Memorial to the Missing, which is located near to the twin villages of Vis en Artois and Haucourt, that stand ten kilometres to the south east of Arras, at the side of the long straight road [the D 939] that stretches between that city and Cambrai. Private Raper’s name is commemorated on the Memorial’s Panel 8.
Amongst one hundred and fifty six former members of the congregation of Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church that had paid the ultimate sacrifice during the war of 1914-18, James Raper’s name is included in Panel five of the Church ‘Roll of Honour’ located on the north interior wall of St Mary’s.
Although the killing on the Western Front had stopped, the dying had not. Thousands upon thousands of casualties had still lain in the hundreds of Hospitals and Casualty Clearing stations dotted throughout the front and the rear areas of France and Belgium. Many had lived long enough to witness the ending of the war, some of them may also have seen many of their more able fellow casualties rejoicing with the thoughts of going home, but they themselves had tragically passed from those scorched lands almost within sight of the journey to ‘Blighty’ and home. Amongst these most unfortunate of men had been; 41476 Private Robert Allan Medd.
Born in Scarborough at No.1 Franklin Street on Thursday the 23RD of June 1892, Robert had been the eldest son of Christiana Page, and Scarborough Corporation labourer Robert Medd, who had still been residing at the above address at the time of the Great War. [22]
Working in the Victoria Road shop of printer William Devonshire at the outbreak of war, a year later Robert Medd had been employed as a ‘shell inspector’ by the British Admiralty, and had journey to the United States during late 1915 in this capacity. Later transferred back to Britain, Medd had worked in a munitions factory in South Yorkshire until early in 1917, when he had been dismissed from this post to almost immediately being ordered to report to Scarborough’s Burniston Road Cavalry Depot, where he had duly been enlisted into the army.
Initially attached for training purposes to the 3RD[Reserve] Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment [Regimental Number 35692], Medd had eventually been posted to the Western Front to serve with the regiment’s 7TH [Service] Battalion, which had been attached to the 33RD Brigade of the 11TH [Northern] Division. Invalided from France during December 1917 suffering from a bad case of ‘trench foot’, Medd had subsequently contracted the ‘Spanish Flu’ that had been ravishing the world during those latter stages of the war and had been out of action until September 1918, when he had been returned to France to serve with ‘D’ Company of the 9TH [Service] Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment.
Attached to the 51ST Brigade of the 17TH [Northern] Division, during the 7TH/ 8TH of November 1918, the 7TH Lincolns had taken part in an operation mounted by 5TH Corps of 3RD Army to the east of Cambrai aimed at securing the Avesnes—Maubeuge road that is described in the Official History;
‘The advanced guards of the 38TH and 17TH Divisions of the V Corps, the 113TH and 51ST Brigades, though supported by the divisisional artillery, were unable to make much progress before dark, the enemy holding the eastern bank of the Ruisseau de la Braqueniere, the stream which runs through Eclaibes and the Avesnes—Maubeuge road from la Belle Hotesse Farm to le Violon in some strength; it was subsequently learnt from prisoners that they had orders to hold on all day at all costs…[19]
Badly injured by a gunshot wound to his abdomen during this operation, Robert Medd had been evacuated to the 21ST Casualty Clearing Station, which had been located in the town of Caudry, where the twenty six years old had died from the effects of his wounds during Thursday the 14TH of November 1918.
The news of Robert Medd’s death had eventually appeared in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 29TH of November 1918;
‘Died of wounds - The late Private Allan R. Medd, 7TH Lincs., elder son of Mr. and Mrs. R.Medd, 1 Franklin Street, who died of wounds at a Casualty Clearing Station in France, went to America in the Autumn of 1915 as a shell inspector for the Admiralty, a position for which he had qualified at his own expense. He returned to England in December of the following year with several colleagues, being promised the same occupation in England, but after being engaged for a fortnight or three weeks at Sheffield they were dismissed and called up. He was invalided from France with trench fever about last Christmas, and after being in various hospitals was stationed in Ireland, from where he returned to France about seven weeks ago after recovering from Influenza. A Chaplain conveyed the news a few days ago that he had been severely wounded in the chest and he passed away from this injury on November 14TH. He was formally a printer with Mr. W. Devonshire. A younger brother, Percy Medd, joined up recently and is stationed in England…
Shortly after his demise, the remains of Robert Medd had been interred in the nearby burial ground that had been attached to the 21ST C.C.S.. Now known as ‘Caudry British Cemetery’, this cemetery is located near to Caudry, a town to be found some ten kilometres to the east of the city of Cambrai on the main Cambrai to Le Cateau road [the N 43]. Containing the graves of over seven hundred casualties of the Great War [50 of which are unidentified] Robert Medd’s final resting place is located in Section 1, Row D, Grave 25 [Medd’s grave is flanked by those of [1/D/24] 30318 Corporal Henry Davill, Military Medal, who had lost his life whilst serving with the 9TH Battalion of the King’s Own [Yorkshire Light Infantry, and [1/D/26] Nafferton born; 55278 Private A.E. Potter of the 1ST Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment. Both of these men had also died on the 14TH of November 1918]. [23]
A former member of the congregation of Scarborough’s Albemarle Baptist Chapel, Robert Allan Medd’s name is commemorated on the Chapel’s Roll of Honour, which lists the names of seventeen men that had lost their lives as a result of the war of 1914-18. Medd’s name can also be found in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery on a gravestone in Section K, Row 7, Grave 8, which marks the final resting place of the soldier’s father, Robert Medd, who had died at the age of fifty five years at his home at No.1 Franklin Street during Saturday the 16TH of October 1920, and Allan’s elder sister Hannah Beatrice Medd, who had also passed away at the house in Franklin Street, on the 13TH of February 1938, at the age of forty nine years.
This memorial also commemorates three unnamed children belonging to the Medd family that had died in infancy, but does not bear the name of Allan’s mother, Christiana Page Medd, who had died at the age of 86 years, on Wednesday the 13TH of January 1945. Mrs. Medd’s cremated remains were interred with those of her husband and daughter during the 31ST of March 1945. The memorial, nevertheless, also includes the inscription…‘Till the day dawns’…
[Following war service with the Durham Light Infantry [Regimental Number 35756] Allan’s younger brother, Percy Page Medd, had returned to Scarborough to live with his parents at No.1 Franklin Street].
Scarborough’s War Memorial also commemorates;
R/25090 Rifleman Claude Nicholas Medd. Born in Scarborough Claude had formally lived in the town at No 52 Raleigh Street until his enlistment into the army at South Elmsall during 1915. Attached to the 18TH [Service] Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps [Arts and Crafts], Rifleman Medd had been killed in action on the 10TH of October 1916; his remains are interred in Warlencourt British Cemetery in Northern France [Section 3, Row B, Grave 17].
8983 Lance Corporal George James Medd. Born at Windsor, George had been the son of George and Agnes Medd of No 54 Trafalgar Road, Scarborough. Attached to the 20TH Hussars, Corporal Medd had been killed in action during the First Battle of Ypres, on the 30TH of October 1914. Aged twenty years at the time of his death George has no known grave and is commemorated on Panel 5 of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres, Western Flanders.
[1] The West Yorkshire Regiment in the War 1914-1918; Volume 2 1917-18; Everard Wyrall; The Bodley Head Publishing Company; London. Courtesy of Mr. Ian Hollingsworth of Scarborough.
[2] George Richard Philp and Elizabeth Jarvis had married in Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church on the 25TH of April 1886. By the time of the 1901 Census the family had been residing in Scarborough at No.4 East Sandgate and had consisted of George Richard Philp, 36 years of age, born Beverley, Elizabeth, 33 years, Lucy, 14 years, Louisa, 12 years, John Edward, 11 years, Frederick, 10 years, Eliza, 9 years, and Harriet, aged 5 years, Elizabeth Philp, and all her children had been born in Scarborough.
[3] ‘Soldiers died in the Great War’ lists two soldiers belonging to the 15TH/17TH Battalion who had also lost their lives on the 18TH of September 1918; 57153 Private David Little and 55754 Private George Edgar Willock. The remains of the 19 years old David Little had for some reason been interred in La Kreule Military Cemetery at Hazebrouk, whilst those of George Willock had never been recovered from the battlefield, his name being commemorated on Panels 3 and 4 of the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing, along with that of the 15TH/17TH’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Wynn Tilley, who had been killed by shellfire during the 14TH of April 1918.
[4] Florrie Lancaster had lost two of her four brothers during the war of 1914-18; 19851 Private Herbert John Lancaster had been killed in action at the age of thirty one on Thursday the 28TH of March 1918, whilst serving with the 21ST [Wool Textile Pioneers] Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. The husband of Ellen Lancaster of No.9 St Mary’s Street, Scarborough, ‘Bert’ Lancaster’s grave is located in France in Mindel Trench British Cemetery, at St Laurent-Blagny. 30576 Private William Lancaster had lost his life at the age of thirty during Saturday the 20TH of April 1918 whilst serving in France with the 6TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. The husband of Annie Isabella Lancaster of 32 Clayton Street, East Hartlepool, ‘Bill’ Lancaster’s final resting place is also located in Northern France, in Lapugnoy Military Cemetery.
[5] Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson; Canadian Expeditionary Force; 1914-1919. The official history of the Canadian Army in the First World War. Ottawa; Queen’s Printer and Controller of Stationary [Available online].
[6] Baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 21ST of June 1897, Walter’s parents, George Thomas Sowersby, and Frances Brittain had been married in the church on the 23RD of March 1878. Living at No.6 Friar’s Entry by April 1901, the month that the 1901 Census of Scarborough’s population had been taken, the family, at this time had consisted of George Thomas Sowersby, 49 years of age, ‘joiner/ carpenter by trade, born at Langtoft North Yorkshire, Frances, 44 years, John William, 22 years, also a ‘joiner/carpenter’ by trade, Richard, 21 years, a ‘bricklayer’ by trade, Fred, aged16 years, had died shortly after the census had been gathered, during July 1901. His remains had been interred in a ‘common grave’ in Scarborough’ Manor Road Cemetery on the 5TH of July 1901, the site of the teenager’s grave [Section Brow 6, Grave 25] is not marked, Herbert, 12 years, Dinah, 10 years, Arthur, 6 years, Walter, 4 years, Alfred, 3 years, and two months old Amanda, who had died at the age of nine months during November 1901 [Also buried in a ‘common grave’ in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section B, Row 5, Grave 21] during the 7TH of November 1901, Amanda Sowersby’s final resting place is also not marked]. Frances Sowersby and all her children had been born at Scarborough.
[7] Excerpts form 7TH Tank Battalion’s War Diary; National Archives Documents; file WO 95/100.
[8] Amongst four officers and thirty one men of the Tank Corps who had lost their lives during the 27TH of September 1918, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records show that apart from Walter Sowersby, three other men belonging to the battalion had also died that day; 69600 Private Sydney Brewer, the twenty eight years old son of William and Sarah Brewer of ‘Trevarren’, Fraddon, Cornwall, and the twenty two years old; 76298 Private John James Suggett, the son of George and Catherine Suggett, of 38 princess Street, Little Burn, Langley Moor, Durham. The remains of these two men had never been recovered from the battlefield, and their names are recorded on Panel 11 of the Vis-en- Artois Memorial to the Missing that includes the names of over 8,000 British servicemen who had lost their lives in Picardy and Artois between the 8TH of August and the Armistice who posses no known graves.
[9] P 371; The East Yorkshire Regiment in the Great War; Everard Wyrall; Harrison; London; 1928.
[28911 Sergeant A.L. Biggs had survived the battle at Neuvilly and the rest of the war, and had eventually received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his various acts of bravery during the 20TH of October 1918].
[10] The Patrick family had lived at this address at the time of the 1901 Census, and had consisted of ‘Inspector of Weights and Measures’, William Patrick, 43 years of age, born at Snainton, wife Margaret, 40 years of age, born Scarborough, son Cecil, aged 14 years, daughter Daisy, 12 years, both born at York, and 1 years old John, born East Ayton.
[11] Baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 11TH of June 1899, Stanley’s parents, Louisa Bell, and George Redman had been married in the church on the 11TH of December 1889. By the time of the 1901 Census the family had been residing in Scarborough at No.17 Wooler Street and had consisted of George C. Redman, 34 years of age, employed as a ‘wine cellar man’, Louisa B., also 34 years of age, George R., 11 years, daughter Trevellian, 9 years, Richard, 7 years, and Stanley C., aged 1 year. All had been born at Scarborough.
[12] The Leeds Rifles original Croix de Guerre and its accompanying citation is lodged in the West Yorkshire Regimental Chapel of York Minster.
[13] At the time of the 1901 Census the Fitzpatrick family had been residing in the City of Kingston upon Hull, at No.31 Lunham’s Buildings, where the 25 years old Hull born Richard M. Fitzpatrick had been employed as a bricklayer’s labourer. Scarborough born Alice Margaret had also been aged 25 at the time, whilst Scarborough born daughter Norah and Hull born Mary Ann Fitzpatrick had been aged 4 and 3 respectively. Richard M. is recorded as being one year old [A third daughter, Alice Margaret, would augment the family during 1902].
[14] The entries belonging to the War Diary of the 1ST Royal Berkshire Regiment are available ‘on-line’ via; ‘thewardrobe.org.uk/wardiary’. An official website belonging to the Regimental Museum of the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire regiment [Salisbury].
[15] The son of Susan and Sydney Fawcett of No.92 Colescliff Road, 22200138 Craftsman Sydney J. Fawcett had been serving in Mombassa as a clerk with the R.E.M.E., where an African had stabbed him during Saturday the 26TH of August 1950. Evacuated to the nearby Military Hospital, Syd had subsequently died from his wounds the following day. A former pupil of St Peters Roman Catholic School, his remains are interred in Mombassa’s Mbaraki Cemetery, B Plot, R.C./S.P./ Row C, Grave 6. The St Peters memorial also bears the name of Syd’s elder brother; John Richard Fawcett, who had lost his life at the age of nineteen whilst serving during the Second World War as a seaman with the British Merchant Navy. Amongst those lost with the sinking of the West Hartlepool registered S.S. Swiftpool on the 5TH of August 1941, the remains of Richard Fawcett had never been recovered from the sea. His name is remembered on Panel 105 of the Tower Hill Memorial in London.
[A photograph of Syd Fawcett and an account of the circumstances surrounding his demise are included in the Scarborough Evening News of Tuesday the 29TH of August 1950].
[16] John Warwick had died in Scarborough at the age of 32 years on the 8TH of January 1889. By the time of the 1901 Census Mary Warwick and her children had been residing at No.108 Victoria Road, the family had consisted of Mary, widow, 45 years of age, a self employed ‘butcher/dealer by trade, daughter Alice Hannah, 18 year, son George Herbert, 16years, employed [in family business] as an ‘apprentice butcher’, and John William, aged 14 years. All had been born in Scarborough.
[17] Extracted from ‘Once a Howard twice a citizen’; Colonel W.J. Tovey and Major A.J. Podmore; 1995
[18] At the time of the Census William Brignall had recorded as being 65 years of age, and employed as a ‘general labourer’. The remainder of his family had consisted of 66 years old wife, Jane Brignall, and Grandson’s William Duck, aged 18 years, Arthur, aged 9 years, and Ernest, aged 7 years, all, with the exception of Bolton born Ernest, had been natives of Loftus.
[19] Military Operations; France and Belgium; 1918; Volume 5. Edmonds/Maxwell-Hyslop; H.M.S.O.; 1947.
[20] Extracted from the War Diary belonging to the 19TH Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, located in File Number WO 95/2484, at the National Archives at Kew, in the City of London.
[21] Scarborough born James Allen Raper had been married at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 10TH of October 1896 to Lincolnshire [Kirton] born Elizabeth Ellen Gilbert. Reportedly ‘deaf and dumb’ at the time of the 1901 Census, the thirty three years old James, and thirty five years old Elizabeth Raper had still been residing in Scarborough at No.4 Palace Hill, with three years old son James, and recently born daughter Amy Gilbert Raper. Both had been born at Scarborough.
[22] Married at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 14TH of December 1887, by the time of the 1901 Census the thirty six years old Scarborough born Robert and forty three years old Ayton born Christiana Page [formerly Pawson] Medd had been residing in Scarborough at No.1 Franklin Street along with children; Hannah Beatrice, aged 12 years, Robert Allan, aged 8 years, and nine months old Percy Richard, who had all been native to Scarborough.
[23] Caudry British Cemetery is also the final resting place of; 100016 Private Walter Knaggs Duck, Military Medal, the twenty nine years old son of Matthew and Emma Jane Duck of Ravenscar, who had died from the effects of wounds received in action whilst serving with the 4TH Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, on the 4TH of November 1918. Walter’s grave is located in Section 4, Row H, Grave 21.