Minor operations in World War One (from the book "Neath a Foreign Sky" by Paul Allen)
R.I.P.
- Second Lieutenant Harry Cliff Brown
- Private Robert William Normandale
- Second Lieutenant Harold Sinclair
- Private Henry Ferguson
- Private Ernest David Robinson
- Private James Fidler
- Driver William Fox
- Private James Robert Gibson
- Sergeant John Hollingsworth
- Private Reginald Hollingsworth
- Sergeant Charles Wesley Proud Lyth
- Sergeant Walter Thompson
The winter of 1916/17 had been the severest for thirty years, the bitterly cold and invariably wet conditions had debilitated thousands of allied [and German] servicemen with trench foot, pneumonia, arthritis, frost bite, and a myriad of other ailments, an officer had subsequently wrote of the period;
‘No one who was not there can fully appreciate the excruciating agonies and misery through which the men had gone in those days…Paddling about by day, sometimes with water above the knees; standing at night, hour after hour on sentry duty, while the drenched boots, puttees and breeches became stiff like cardboard with ice from the freezing cold air’…
Regardless of the atrocious conditions the fight for supremacy of the ‘Western Front’ had continued. In the early hours of Saturday the seventeenth of February elements Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army had launched an attack in the Ancre Sector of the Somme on the German front line that ran through the village of Serre to the nearby village of Miraumont.
Amongst the units that had taken part in the operation had been the 188TH Brigade of the 63RD [Royal Naval] Division that had consisted of the 1ST and 2ND Battalions of the Royal Marine Light Infantry [R.M.L.I.] and the Howe Battalion. The Brigade’s objectives had been the capture of a sunken road running north from Baillescourt Farm, which had been about half a mile in front of the British front line, and the seizure of two strong point, one of which had been known as ‘The Pimple’.
The attack had begun at the appointed ‘Zero Hour’ of 5-45am on the seventeenth. The terrain some days prior to the attack had been frozen, however on the 16th a thaw had set in. An idea of the conditions which had been the Ancre at the time is described in the ‘Official History’ [1917 Volume one P 76]; … ‘at dawn on the 17TH there was dark cloud, overhead, wet mist near the ground and underfoot a slippery surface, which soon degenerated into deep greasy mud once more’. In these conditions and due to a navigational problem the assault had immediately gone awry, nonetheless the attack had continued and the marines had taken all their objectives albeit at a heavy price;
‘During the advance Captain Pearson commanding ‘A’ Company looking to his left saw an enemy machine gun being got up out of its hole and brought into action; he picked off one man with his rifle and shot another, he was then joined by Lieutenant Sanderson and between them they picked off five men and the enemy gave up the attempt. If the gun had been brought into action it would have swept the sunken road, which was packed with men as they were re- organising and would have turned a great success into a dreadful failure’…[1]
[for his actions that day Captain Pearson had received the Military Cross].
The ‘Pimple’ had eventually been taken by Major Ozanne’s ‘D’ Company shortly after 6-40am following an assault by Sergeant W.G. Scott who had attacked the entrance to the strongpoint with hand grenades. [Sergeant Scott had eventually received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions].
For the remainder of the seventeenth the Royal Marines had been subjected to a heavy enemy artillery bombardment. 1ST RMLI had eventually been relieved during the night of the following day, the weary and shell-shocked Marines making their way to the rear. At Martinsart the survivors had been met by the band of the Royal Marines Depot at Deal that had played them into billets in the nearby village of Engelbelmer, where shortly after their arrival the remains of the battalion had been mustered to ‘Call the Roll’. Of the sixteen officers and five hundred men of the Battalion who had commenced the attack only three officers and a hundred men had answered to their names. Amongst those who had not, had been; Temporary Second Lieutenant Harry Cliff Brown.
Born at Norwich on the 29TH of October 1882 Harry had been the only son of Emma and James Brown, who at the time of his son’ death had been a retired civil servant of the Republic of Eire living in Scarborough at a house named ‘Eborville’, No 8 St Johns Avenue. Before the war Harry Brown had been living in Dublin where he had been employed as a surveyor with the Irish Land Commission. At the outbreak of the conflict the thirty-two years old Harry had enlisted into the Territorial Force at Dublin on the 16TH of October 1915. Standing at a height of five feet ten and a half inches, and possessing a ‘good physical development’ Brown had eventually served as a Private [Regimental Number 6936] with No.7 Officer Cadet Battalion, which had been based at Moor Park, in County Cork. However, on the 20TH of October 1915 he had enlisted at London’s Lincoln’s Inn into the Inns of Court Officer Training Company. Promoted to the rank of unpaid Lance Corporal with effect from the 10TH of May 1916, Brown had remained with this unit until the 25TH of October 1916 when he had been ‘gazetted’ with the rank of Second Lieutenant and had been granted a temporary commission in the Plymouth Division of the Royal Marine Light Infantry [R.M.L.I.], this unit’s Headquarters being at the time located at Stonehouse Barracks in Plymouth.
Harry Brown had remained at Stonehouse until the 27TH of November 1916, when he had received orders to proceed to France and the First Battalion of the R.M.L.I.. The C.O. of the establishment had included a couple of comments on Brown’s Service Record his General Conduct had been ‘Satisfactory’, had made no comment of his ability, and had written that he was; ’Interested in his work’, appears suitable’…[2]
Brown had eventually joined ‘C’ Company of 1ST R.M.L.I. in France on the twenty ninth of November 1916 with a draft of replacements for the three hundred and sixty three officers and men of the battalion who had recently [13TH November] become casualties during the capture of Beaucourt, one of the last acts of the Somme Offensive, The Battle of the Ancre [13-18 November]. At the time that Harry had joined the formation it had been in billets at Engelbelmer, a village four and a half miles north west of Albert, from where it had rotated with the Second Battalion in very wet front line trenches on the southern bank of the Ancre, near to the enemy held village of Grandcourt.
The final two and a half months of Harry Cliff Brown’s life had inevitably been immersed in the routine of life on the Western Front, rotation in and out of the line, trench raids, patrols, and localised attacks on the enemy. By the thirteenth of February 1917 the battalion had been ‘resting’ in the village of Martinsart, during that day the officers had been briefed about the forthcoming attack on the Pimple the news had been relayed to the men who had begun to make their preparations for battle. During the night of the 14TH/15TH of February the Battalion had relieved the 10TH Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in ‘Puiseux Trench’ on the north bank of the Ancre. At 10pm on the following night the battalion had made their final preparations for the attack that had begun a few hours later.
The fateful telegram from the Admiralty informing James Brown that his son was ‘missing in action’, had arrived at his home in St John’s Avenue towards the end of February, the tidings had subsequently been reported unusually not in a casualty list, but the ‘Local News’ section of the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 2ND of March 1917;
‘Scarborough officer missing’.
‘Mr. Jas. Brown, of Eborville, [No 8] St John’s Avenue, has received a notification from the Admiralty that his only son Harry C. Brown, Second Lieutenant, R.M.L.I., has been missing since operations in France on the 17TH inst. Sec. Lieut. Brown joined the Inns of Court O.T.C. in October 1915, and was gazetted in November last to the R.M.L.I., being sent to France three weeks later. This young officer before joining up was a surveyor in the Irish Land Commission, and was stationed in Dublin’…
A week later, on Friday the ninth of February the newspaper had reported;
‘Sec. Lieut. Harold C. Brown’.
‘We recently announced that Sec- Lieutenant Harold C. Brown, R.M.L.I., only son of Mr. James Brown, Eborville, St John’s Avenue, was missing. Official intimation has now been received that he is dead’…
In the days immediately after the battle for the Pimple, the Second in Command of 1ST RMLI [Captain Huskisson] had taken a burial party back to the scene of the fighting where they had recovered ninety-five bodies, including Harry Cliff Brown’s. These had been taken to River Trench Cemetery at Pusieux where they had been buried, each grave being marked with a cross with the dead man’s number and name written on a piece of paper and placed in a bottle at the foot of each cross. These had later been replaced with engraved zinc plates, which had been attached to the crosses. At the end of the war the bodies had been exhumed by the then Imperial War Graves Commission and taken to the nearby ‘Queens Cemetery’ just to the south of the small village of Bucquoy in the Pas de Calais Department of France. Harry Cliff Brown’s grave can be found in Plot 2, Section H, [Grave 7] of the Cemetery.
At the end of the war James Brown had received through the post a brown paper package from the Admiralty, it had contained the medals that had been bestowed on his son by a grateful nation, the customary, War Medal, and a Victory Medal.
Apart from the War Memorial, in Scarborough Harry’s name had at one time been commemorated on a ’Roll of Honour’ inside Holy Trinity Church, in the town’s Trinity Road. Alas the church is now [2003] being converted into private housing, the whereabouts of the memorial commemorating the names of twenty eight members of the church who had lost their lives during the ‘Great War’ is not known. The fallen officer’s name can, however, be found on a broken monument in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Plot K, Border, Grave 43] which also commemorates the name of his mother, Emma A. Brown, who had died on the 5TH of October 1915 at the age of sixty one years, and his father who had passed away at the age of 79 years on the 12TH of July 1925. [By the 1920’s James Brown had been living in Scarborough at No 31 West Bank].
Inevitably, having been cut to ribbons by machine gun fire, blown to pieces by shell fire, or drowned in the many flooded shell holes, many of the bodies of the marines who had lost their lives during the operation had never been located, amongst them had been;
Chatham /Service/ 1007 Private Robert William Normandale.
Attached to ‘A’ Company of 1ST R.M.L.I. ‘Bob’ Normandale had been born in Scarborough on the 9TH of February 1895 at No2 Adelaide Place [Spreight Lane], and had been the eldest son of Elizabeth, and ‘Drapers Porter’, Robert William Normandale [Robert William Normandale and Elizabeth Ollett had been married at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 25TH of October 1890]. [3]
Fatherless from the age of six, [Robert William Snr. had died at the age of thirty during January 1901, and had been buried on the 7TH in an unmarked grave in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery; Plot P, Row 12, Grave 5] Robert had been a pupil of Friarage Infants and Junior School until the age of thirteen when he had left the institution to become an apprentice Joiner with local building contractor John Jaram with whom he had remained until just before the outbreak of the war, when he had left his home at No 8 Church Stairs Street, in Scarborough to take up work in a factory in Newcastle.
Aged twenty years, seven months, and three days, Robert had enlisted into the Royal Marines at Newcastle on Tuesday the 14TH of October 1915, and had been the one thousand and seventh recruit to be enlisted into the Corps under a recently [September 1914] introduced ‘Special’ or ‘Short Service’ scheme which had allowed men to enlist for the duration of the war only, before this all recruits into the Royal Marines had had to enlist for a minimum of twelve years service with the colours. According to his service record, at the time that Normandale had enlisted he had stood at five feet five inches in his stocking feet, had had a fresh complexion, blue eyes, and brown hair. His previous employment had been recorded as a Joiner/Labourer, his religion being Church of England. [2]
Robert Normandale had eventually been sent with a draft of recruits to the Royal Marines Depot at Deal in Kent, where he and his comrades had begun a basic course of training. Before the war the training of ‘regular’ Royal Marines recruits had lasted for a year, however, by 1915 this period had been shortened to twelve, or as in Normandale’s case, six weeks, during this period he had learned the basics of military arms drill, undergone strenuous physical exercise, and most importantly for an infantryman, taught the rudiments of handling and firing a rifle.
On the 29TH of November 1915 Normandale had completed his infantry training and had been sent to his divisional depot at Chatham where he had undergone further training in preparation to being sent to one of the two Battalions of Royal Marines which had been serving at the time with the Naval Brigade on the Gallipoli peninsular. His posting had
Subsequently arrived early in the New Year. On the fifteenth of February 1916 Robert had embarked in troop transport at Plymouth and had eventually arrived at the Egyptian port of Alexandria early in March to take up residence for a while in Mustapha Barracks before being posted to the First Battalion, which had been stationed on the Greek island of Lemnos following the unit’s evacuation from the Gallipoli Peninsular in December 1915.
Shortly after Normandale’s arrival, on the 29TH of April 1916, the Royal Naval Brigade had been transferred from the authority of the Admiralty to that of the War Office and had eventually [19TH of July] been renamed the 63RD [Royal Naval] Division. Fiercely proud of their naval beginnings the formation had nonetheless, much to the chagrin of many senior Army officers, continued with their naval customs and traditions. Naval ranks had remained, and many of the men, including Royal Marines had maintained the naval custom of growing ‘full sets’ [beards]. In addition the White Ensign had continued to be flown at divisional headquarters.
The Division had inevitably been posted to France, the 25 officers and 1,021 men of First Royal Marines Light Infantry arriving at Marseilles on the fifteenth of May 1916. Soon the battalion had begun training in the arts of living and fighting according to the rules of the ‘Western Front’, an art form that had evolved in two years of very bitter fighting. The division had been introduced to the theatre gradually. In quieter sectors behind the lines the units various battalions had undergone platoon, company, battalion, and brigade training, as well as being attached to another division for tours in the front line. These tours had been far from peaceful; raids and local attacks had brought in a steady stream of casualties.
Normandale had been spared from the blood letting of the earlier phases of the Somme Offensive, however, he had been amongst the men of 188TH brigade as they had filed into the front line of the Ancre sector on the 12TH of November 1916 preparatory to their taking part [with the remainder of 63RD Division] in an assault planned to begin in the early hours of the following day on the heavily fortified village of Beaucourt-sur-Ancre. First RMLI’s objective had been a complex of three lines of enemy front line trenches which had been know as ‘The Dotted Green Line’ and the ‘Yellow Line’ a trench running across the south western edge of the ruined village.
At about 3am in the morning of Monday the thirteenth of November platoons of 1ST RMLI had moved out into no man’s land, and crawled up to the German wire to wait for ‘Zero Hour’. At the appointed hour [5-45am] the men had rose to their feet and had advanced into the darkness accompanied by a heavy mist. Despite the poor visibility they had been spotted almost immediately, the German artillery and machine guns pouring a fearful fire into the ranks of the advancing marines, about fifty per cent of casualties had occurred in no man’s land before they had reached and crossed the German first line of trenches, including every company commander in 1ST RMLI killed. The ground had been a quagmire, making movement virtually impossible, nonetheless, the remains of 1ST RMLI had reorganised in the first and second German lines but only small parties had reached the third line beyond.
Desperate hand-to-hand fighting had continued throughout the night of the thirteenth, during the following day Beaucourt had finally fallen after two tanks had gone forward to make short work of a strongpoint that had caused immense problems the previous day.
The 63RD Division had remained in position until relieved by the 37TH Division on the fifteenth of November. 1ST RMLI had gone into action with four hundred officers and men and had come out with only a hundred and thirty eight having suffered 47 killed, 210 wounded, and 85 missing. Of the twenty-three officers, six were killed, twelve wounded, and three missing, all the missing had actually been killed, although this was not established until much later. [During the month of November 1916 the 63RD Division as a whole had lost a hundred officers and sixteen hundred men killed, and one hundred and sixty officers and 2,377 men wounded].
Elizabeth Normandale had received a letter from the Commanding Officer of ‘A’ Company [Captain Pearson] at the end of February informing her of Robert’s death. The news had been relayed in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 9TH of March 1917;
‘Reported death of Scarboro soldier’.
‘Although no War Office notice has been received Mrs. Normandale, 34, St Mary’s Walk, has had news which causes anxiety on account of her eldest son, Private R.W. Normandale, R.M.L.I.
A letter from the commanding officer has reached her expressing regret at the death of Private Normandale, and stated that a parcel which had arrived which had been divided amongst his comrades [it had been the usual practice throughout the war to divide the contents of a dead mans parcels between the members of his platoon]
Mrs. Normandale has not heard from her son for three weeks. The parcel had been sent for his birthday. He would be 22 on February 11th.
Private Normandale formerly worked at Armstrong’s Works, Newcastle’…
A week later the newspaper of Friday the sixteenth of March had reported;
‘Officially confirmed’.
‘Official information of the death, announced last week, of Private R.W. Normandale has been received. He was in the R.M.L.I. and had served in France and Egypt. His home was 34, St Mary’s Walk and he was 22 years of age. He had been in hospital three times suffering from shell shock’…
Despite the six extensive searches which had been made by the Imperial War Graves Commission of the Somme battlefield after the war the identifiable remains of Robert Normandale had never been located, his name had been included with those of 73, 077 other missing officers and men on the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme at Thiepval, it can be located on Pier and Face 1A of the Memorial.
After the war Whitby born Elizabeth Normandale had been living in Scarborough at No11 Batty Place when she had received the brown paper parcel from the Admiralty containing her lost son’s medals [a British War Medal and Victory Medal], she had remained there until 1938, when she had moved to the brand new No 32 Northstead Flats in the burgeoning Northstead Estate, she had lived there until her death on the 25TH of September 1943 at the age of seventy three years. Elizabeth Normandale’s funeral had taken place during the afternoon of the 25th of September, her remains had been interred with those of her eldest daughter, Sophia, the wife of Ben Hargreaves, who had recently [January 1943] passed away at the age of forty eight years, in Woodlands Cemetery [Plot C, Row 3, Grave 11,] her final resting place, alas, is unmarked.
In the wake of the operation at Miraumont the British Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had thrown aside his usual disregard for the men under his command by sending a congratulatory message direct to the commander of 188TH Brigade, an act which had until then had been virtually unheard of. The telegram had said; ‘Warmest congratulations on success of your operations on 17TH’…
The Royal Marines had suffered terrible casualties at Miraumont, worse was to come during the forthcoming Arras Offensive, and the capture of a ruined windmill at Gavrelle.
Many of the men featured in my text had lived very short lives on the Western Front, especially officers. As we have seen Lieutenant Harry Cliff Brown had barely experienced three months active service at the front before being killed in the action at Miraumont. There had been another officer on the Ancre that day that had survived for much less time. His unit had taken their place in the front line of the Ancre Sector for the first time during the fifteenth of February, scarcely forty eight hours later the young man had been killed by enemy shellfire; Second Lieutenant Harold Sinclair.
Born in Scarborough during 1894 at ‘Ivydene’ in Stepney Road, Harold had been the youngest son of Alice Maud and Building Contractor and Justice of the peace, Andrew Worke Sinclair. A pupil of Gladstone Road School, Harold had left the establishment at the age of fourteen to begin an apprenticeship with Scarborough drapers, Messrs Marshall and Snelgrove at No 4-11 St Nicholas Street, however, by the outbreak of the war Sinclair had been working in the drapery department of ‘Jenners’ department store in Edinburgh’s fashionable Princes Street.
Sinclair had initially enlisted in Edinburgh into the Territorial Force’s 1ST/9TH [Highlanders] Battalion of the Royal Scots [which had also been known as ‘The Dandy Ninth’] at their Headquarters that had been in the city’s East Claremont Street. At the time the unit had formed part of the Lothian Brigade of the Scottish Coast Defence Force until the 26TH of February 1915, when it had joined the 81ST Brigade of the 27TH Division. The unit had eventually arrived in France on the 21ST of December 1914 and had been transferred to the Ypres Sector in time to take part in the Second Battle of Ypres, notably the Battle of Frezenberg Ridge [8TH-13TH May 1915] during which the division had faced numerous German attempts to break through the British line and had suffered severe casualties as a consequence, nonetheless, the unit had been credited with having contributed substantially to the saving of the front. The Division had remained on the Western Front in a severely weakened state until November 1915 when it had been sent to the Salonica [Greece] Front, where it had remained until the Armistice.
During October 1915 however, Harold Sinclair had undergone an operation to remove an infected appendix, and had been consequently been invalided to Scarborough to recuperate. During January 1916 he had received a commission with the Second Line Territorial Force 2ND/4TH Duke Of Wellington’s [the Second Line T.F. Battalions had been raised following the departure of the original battalion to the front. The First Line 1ST/4TH Battalion of the D.O.W.’s had existed before the war and had served with the 49TH Division] which had formed at Halifax, West Yorkshire during September 1914. At the time that Sinclair had joined the Battalion the unit had been training on Salisbury Plain, where it had remained until it’s embarkation for France during January 1917.
The Sinclair’s had received news of their son’s death during Sunday the eighteenth of February 1917; the tidings had been included in the following Friday’s edition of the ‘Scarborough Mercury’;
‘Scarborough Magistrate’s loss’
‘On Sunday afternoon a telegram was received by Mr. A.W. Sinclair, J.P., Stepney Road, stating that his youngest son, Lieutenant Harold Sinclair, had been killed n action on February 17TH.
Lieutenant Sinclair joined the 9th Royal Scots [Highlanders] in Edinburgh on the day of
Army mobilisation [August 4TH 1914]. He went to France in February 1915, was in the Second battle of Ypres, and later, after an operation for appendicitis, was invalided home in October 1915. In January 1916, he had received a commission in the 2ND/4TH Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, was promoted to full Lieutenant in the July following, and returned to the front five weeks ago. H e specialised in bombing and held a brigade instruction certificate. Before joining the Army Lieutenant Sinclair was engaged in the drapery trade, at Messrs Marshall and Snelgrove’s, Scarborough, and later, at Messrs Jenner’s Edinburgh. He was 23 years of age, and single’…
The body of Harold Sinclair had initially been buried near to where he had fallen, however, during May 1917 Fifth Corps had removed the Ancre battlefield burials to a newly created concentration of cemeteries named ‘Serre Road Cemetery, Numbers One and Two’, which are situated near the hard fought for village of Serre Les Puiseux, eleven kilometres north-north west of Albert. Sinclair’s grave can be located in Serre Road Cemetery Number Two, in Plot 2, Section D, [Grave 18]. There are over seven thousand World War One casualties commemorated in this Cemetery, over two thirds of these are unidentified.
In addition to the town’s War Memorial, Harold’s name is commemorated in Scarborough on a ‘Roll of Honour’ located in the hall of Gladstone Road Infant and Junior School, in Wooler Street, and on a gravestone in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery which also bears the names of his North Shields born father, Andrew Worke Sinclair, who had died on the 31ST of December 1922 at the age of sixty five years, and Scarborough born mother, Alice Maude, who had passed away at the age of eighty four years on the 10TH of July 1946. Also included on the now fallen stone is the name of Harold’s elder sister and only daughter of the Sinclair’s [born in Scarborough during 1892] Eleanor Maude, who had died on the first of October 1958 at the age of sixty-six years. The Sinclair’s had also included an epitaph for their son on the stone, the often used paragraph from Chapter 15, verse 13, from the Book of St. John;
‘Greater love hath no man that this. That he should lay down his life for his friends’…
A few days after Sinclair’s death the brigade major [Captain C.H. Hoare] of 187TH Brigade of 62ND Division, aroused by a lack of activity on the German side of the front had stepped gingerly into ‘No Man’s Land’ to find out what had been happening. He had eventually walked for nearly a mile without drawing fire, the German’s had vanished.
Long before the Battle of the Somme had ended the Germans had begun to secretly construct another line of formidable defensive positions ten miles behind the original ‘Western Front, thus shortening their front by twenty five miles and releasing thirteen divisions into their reserve. They had name the new position ‘Seigfried Stellung’, however, to the British it would become infamously known as the ‘Hindenburg Line’. The Hindenburg line had ran from Arras in the north to the Aisne in the south and had consisted of a series of superbly sited concrete blockhouses and machine gun emplacements all of which had been protected by dense seemingly impenetrable fields of barbed wire.
The Germans had begun their withdrawal to the new position on the fourth of February, at first they had melted away in drips and drabs, however, the withdrawal had soon become general. In their wake the Germans had left a wasteland, they had systematically devastated the area between the old front line and the Hindenburg Line by blowing up houses, burning farms, uprooting orchards, chopping down trees, and obliterating roads so that the advancing Allies would find nothing that would be of use to them.
By the time the Allies had caught up with their enemy it had been entrenched in positions that looked impregnable, all the privations and deaths of the previous grim year had seemingly been for nothing. The war for ‘Tommie’ and ‘Fritz’ had still got a hard and bloody road to tread.
Following the German withdrawal the British Third Division had occupied a sector of the newly formed British front line to the east of Arras. The Division’s Ninth Brigade had been stationed in a section of the line near the village of St Sauveur; where during Tuesday the twenty seventh of March the Germans had mounted two attacks with infantry and artillery. These assaults had been repulsed; nonetheless, there had been casualties. Amongst them had been a soldier who two days before had celebrated his twenty first birthday; 62196 Private Henry Ferguson.
Born in Scarborough on the 25TH of March 1896 [Baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on the 19TH of April] at No1 New Queen Street, ‘Harry’ had been the only son of Jane Ann and Henry Ferguson, who had been a ‘photographers assistant’ by profession. A pupil of St Mary’s Parish School from the age of four, Harry had eventually secured a scholarship to Scarborough’s Municipal School [the equivalent of today’s comprehensive school] where he had studied between 1908 and 1912, when Ferguson had left the institution to work in the City of London for the government.
At the time of the outbreak of war in August 1914 Ferguson had been living in London at Stroud Green, during the following year the eighteen years old had enlisted as a Private [Regimental Number 4730] at the Chelsea Headquarters of the Territorial Force’s, 3RD/1ST County of London Yeomanry, [Middlesex Duke of Cambridge’s Hussars], with which he had served in England until he had been transferred with a number of replacements to the 4TH Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers during August 1916. At the time the Battalion, a pre war Regular Army formation, had been recuperating following the heavy fighting for Delville Wood that had taken place the previous month.
At the time that their son had been killed [by shell fire], Henry and Jane Ferguson had been living in Scarborough at No1 St Sepulchre Street, it had been here that they had received a telegram from the War Office nearly a month after Harry’s death on Tuesday the twenty fourth of April 1917. The news had subsequently been transmitted in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the twenty seventh;
‘Former Municipal Scholar killed’.
‘Private H. Ferguson, son of Mr. And Mrs. Ferguson, 1 St. Sepulchre Street, Scarborough, who has been killed in action, was 21years of age. The family formerly belonged to Newcastle, but have lived here for some years. The young soldier was formerly a student at the Municipal School, and afterwards obtained a government appointment in London. He joined the Middlesex Yeomanry, and was later transferred to the Royal Fusiliers’…
The remains of Harry Ferguson had eventually been buried in Ronville British Cemetery which had been near to St Sauveur, however, during August 1918 they had been amongst those of a hundred and sixty six British soldiers which had been re-interred in Beurains Road Cemetery, which is just north of Beurains, a village on the southern outskirts of Arras. His Grave can be found in Section E. [Grave 7].
A former bell ringer at St Mary’s Parish Church in Scarborough, at the end of the war Harry Ferguson’s name had been included on the Church ‘Roll of Honour’, which is located on the north interior wall. In addition, Harry’s name had been commemorated in St Columba’s Church in Dean Road, and upon a ‘Roll of Honour’, which for many years had graced a wall of the Municipal school, and eventually the Scarborough Boy’s High School, which had been situated in Westwood. The Memorial, which had originally been erected by ‘The Old Scholars Club’ [bearing the names of over sixty former pupils who had lost their lives during the Great War] is now located in Graham Comprehensive School, located on the outskirts of Scarborough in Woodlands Drive.
A short distance from Graham School can be found Woodlands Cemetery in which can be found another memorial bearing the young soldiers name. The memorial is situated in Section C, Row 4, Grave 32, and also bears the names of Harry’s father who had been born at Belford [Northumberland] during 1866, he had died in 1944, and Scarborough born [also1866] mother, who had passed away ten years later. In addition can be found the names of Harry Ferguson’s two sisters, Elsie Hannah who had been born in Scarborough on the 6TH of December 1895, she had died on the 11TH of January 1977, and Edith Dorothy who had also been born in the town, during 1903, she had passed away during 1969.
The battle worn Second Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, belonging to 30TH Division, had moved northwards from the Somme towards the end of January 1917. By the 28TH of March the unit had found themselves near to the village of Ficheux, holding an outpost line to the west of the tiny hamlet of Henin -sur-Cojeul, which is located some six miles to the south west of Arras. A village of around a thousand inhabitants before the war, and with a small stream, the Cojuel, running through it, Wylly describes the village in 1917 as being; ‘on level ground, fairly well wooded, with gardens and orchards on the east of it, while the houses of the village, though badly battered, had for the most part the walls still standing’… Skirting the north west side of the village and leading right into the British position was a deep and wide German communication trench known as ‘Nagpur Trench….
Considered to be lightly held by the British, the task of ‘squeezing’ the enemy out of Henin had been detailed to the Second Yorks, which, during the early hours of Saturday the 31ST of March had launched an attack using ‘A’ [Commanded by Captain G.N. Smith] and ‘B’ [Captain R.A. Field] Companies who had been given the objective of; ‘placing posts quietly round the village and then induce the enemy to leave it’. Garrisoned by four hundred officers and men of the 99TH Regiment of Prussian Infantry, a unit noted for their determination in battle, the British High Command had been over optimistic, to say the least, in their belief that there would be little resistance. Nonetheless, the fiasco had gone ahead, Wylly says of the attack;
‘B’ Company made a fine attempt to succeed, reaching a point in line with the centre of the village in Nagpur Trench, where they captured a machine gun post and a few prisoners. Here a gallant little subaltern, [Second Lieutenant] Smith, who had recently joined from a public schools battalion, showed his mettle by assaulting an enormous Prussian, thus proving that his heart was bigger than his body. After dawn the enemy became too aggressive for any forward positions to be held, so our advanced parties were withdrawn into our outpost position. Field as usual had behaved gallantly and performed several feats of daring. Much useful information about Henin was obtained as a result of this small affair’…
The ‘small affair’ had been expensive. The casualties incurred by the two companies had been one officer and six other ranks killed, eighteen men wounded, and a further eighteen men missing. Amongst the latter had been the nineteen years old; 32974 Private Ernest David Robinson.
Born in Scarborough on the 18TH of October 1898 at No 41 Castlegate, Ernest had been the eldest of two sons of Eliza and William Barber Robinson, a butcher by trade. A pupil of Friarage Board School between the ages of four and thirteen, Ernest had left the institution during 1910 to become an apprentice in the Linotype Department of the ‘Scarborough Evening News’ newspaper, which had been [and still is] based in Scarborough’s Aberdeen Walk. By this time the Robinson family had been living nearby at No 43 Victoria Street, William Robinson being the proprietor of a butchers shop situated near the town’s indoor market at No 8 St Helen’s Square. At the beginning of the war, however, during September 1914, Mr. Robinson had closed his shop to enlist into the Army, he had served as a butcher in the Army Service Corps throughout the conflict, unlike his son he had survived.
Ernest had eventually followed in his father’s footsteps towards the end of August 1916, by enlisting into the Yorkshire Regiment at Scarborough’s Recruiting Office, which had been situated in St Nicholas Street. The eighteen years old had eventually been sent to the battalion’s depot in the North Yorkshire market town of Richmond where he had been ‘kitted out’ with a uniform, a pair of boots, Whilst there he had also been introduced to the basics of soldiering, which had entailed blistered feet from the seemingly endless hours spent route marching, and being harried round the parade ground by a foul mouthed Non Commissioned Officer.
Robinson had also learnt how to handle and fire the standard British Army fifteen rounds per minute with the infantryman’s primary weapon of war, the.303 Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle. By December 1916 he had been considered fit enough to be sent abroad, therefore, towards the end of the month he had been included in a draft of battle replacements destined for the Regiment’s Regular Army Second Battalion, which had been serving on the Western Front.
Robinson and a large draft of replacements had joined the battalion near the Somme village of Bailleuval during late December 1916. At the time the men of the unit had licking their wounds after suffering over fifty per cent casualties in the Somme Offensive between July and October 1916. The battalion had remained in this area for the remainder of 1916, the time being taken up by training the newly arrived replacements. Despite heavy falls of snow, during early January 1917 the unit had been set to cutting wood in the forest of Lucheux, however, on the twenty sixth, the battalion had been moved to Mondicourt where the men had been employed for ten days by the Royal Engineers in the building of a light railway system.
The Second Yorks had eventually gone into the front line near Achicourt, by Somme standards a relatively quiet sector where they had remained for a short time until relieved by another battalion. The battalion had then gone into Divisional Reserve at Beaumetz where the unit had furnished many working parties for the engineers, especially for the construction of a Corps telephone cable trench between the village and Berneville. By the end of January the 2ND Yorks had received orders to move to Arras where they had again been used as labour for the Royal Engineers.
With two of her men folk serving in France one can barely imagine the anxiety that Eliza Robinson had gone through each waking day as she had waited for news, good or bad, regarding her husband and son. Sadly her worst fears had come to fruition on Monday the twenty third of April 1917, when she had received a telegram from the War Office informing her Ernest had been wounded, the tidings had been included in the ‘Scarboro Casualties’ section of ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the twenty seventh;
‘Young Soldier Wounded’.
‘Official news was received by his mother, Mrs. W. Robinson, 45, Victoria Street, [Monday] morning, that Private Ernest Robinson, Yorkshire Regt., was wounded on March 31ST. Anxiety had been felt for some time owing to the absence of letters, and it is hoped that favourable news as to his condition will be forthcoming. He was nineteen and a half years of age and the son of Mr W. Robinson who is a butcher with the A.S.C. in France, and who formerly carried on business at 8. St Helen’s Square. Private Robinson was a member of the ‘Evening News’ Lino-room staff, joining up at the end of August, and proceeding to France in Christmas week’…
Mrs. Robinson had received no further news regarding her son’s condition until mid May when she had received a letter from the Commanding Officer of ‘A’ Company, Captain Smith, informing her that Ernest had been killed. The ‘Scarborough Mercury of Friday the eleventh of May had subsequently reported;
‘Private E.D. Robinson feared killed’.
‘Mrs. Robinson, Victoria Street, about whose son there has been some uncertainty for some time, has had a letter from an officer in which he says: ‘I regret to say that I am afraid that you son, Private E.D. Robinson, has been killed’. The officer goes on to describe Private Robinson, who was not 20 years of age, as a gallant fellow who was liked by all his comrades. He expresses sympathy with the parents’…
After being told that her son had been killed one would have thought that no further news would be forthcoming, this had not been the case. On Monday the fourteenth of May, Eliza Robinson had received official notification from the War Office informing her that Ernest had been recorded as ‘missing in action’ from the 31STof March 1917. The distraught mother had heard nothing more until October when she had received word that there had been a sliver of a chance that Ernest had been a Prisoner of War in Germany. The Scarborough Mercury of Friday the nineteenth of October had revealed;
‘A record in Germany’
‘Further enquiries regarding Private E, Robinson, Victoria Street, who has been missing many months show that there is a record of him in Germany, but it is only relates to a list of effects left and little hope is held out that he can be alive. It seems probable that Private Robinson died of the severe wounds he was known to have sustained. The present news comes through Switzerland’…
Again there had been a terrible wait for news. The final scrap of information regarding her lost son had reached Eliza Robinson via the British Red Cross just before Christmas 1917. On Friday the four of January 1918 ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ had announced;
‘Died in Germany’
‘Mrs. Robinson, 45, Victoria Street, Scarborough, has received the sad news from the British Red Cross Society that the name of her son Private E.D. Robinson, Yorks Regt., appears on an official German list of dead. Mrs Robinson has also received tidings to the same effect from the War Office, who notify the death as having occurred on the 8TH of April. Private Robinson being a Prisoner of War. The cause of death is not stated. Before enlistment he was an apprentice to Linotype operating at this office’…
Eighty-six years on the operation at Henin is long forgotten. Where and why Ernest Robinson had died will never be known. One can only surmise that he had been so badly wounded during the action at Nagpur Trench that his retreating comrades had left him behind to be taken prisoner by the Germans, they had given the wounded soldier as much medical attention as they could before packing him off on a train bound for Germany. He may have subsequently died during the journey and had been buried near to the railway, or he may have succumbed to his injuries inside a Prisoner of War camp in Germany, whatever had happened to him his grave had never been discovered after the war and his name had been included in Bay Three of the Arras Memorial, which commemorates the names of the men of the Yorkshire Regiment who had lost their lives during the Arras Offensive and the German Spring Offensive of March 1918, for whom there is no known grave.
In Scarborough Ernest’s name can be found on a memorial in the town’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section V, Row 16, Grave 21], which also bears the name of his Scarborough born mother, who had died at her home in Victoria Street on Friday the 6TH of January 1939 at the age of 67 years, and an inscription that reads;
‘No loved one stood beside him to hear his last farewell.
No words of comfort could he have from those who loved him well’.
‘Till we meet again’…
[Born at Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire during 1871, William Robinson had moved to the West Midlands following the death of his wife, to live with his youngest son John Leslie Robinson [born in Scarborough during 1912], who’s last known address is No.86 City Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham].
The Memorial to the Missing at Arras commemorates the names of over 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and New Zealand who had died in the Arras Sector between the spring of 1916 and the 7TH of August 1918, the eve of the Advance to Victory, who have no known grave.
In addition to that of Ernest David Robinson the Memorial also bears the names of a number of other men native to Scarborough; 241842 Private James Fidler. Born in Scarborough during 1897 James had been attached to the 2ND/5TH Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment, and had been reported as missing believed killed in action from the 21ST of March 1918, aged 20 years, James had been the son of John and Emma Fidler of No. 87 Caledonia Street. [Bay3 and 4].
755176 Driver William Fox. Born in Scarborough during 1899, William had been attached to the 107TH Battery, 23RD Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. Missing believed killed in action from the 22ND of March 1918, he had been aged 21 years and had been the son of William and Katherine Fox of No.6 Hope Street. [Bay 1].
24383 Private James Robert Gibson. A soldier in the 7TH Battalion Yorkshire Regiment. James had been born in Scarborough during 1893 and had been reported as missing believed killed in action from the 12TH of May 1917. Aged 24 years at the time of his death James had been the son of William and Helen Gibson of No.40 Oak Road and the husband of Beatrice Alice Dawson [formerly Gibson] of No.40 Trafalgar Street West [Bay 5].
22081 Acting Sergeant John Hollingsworth. Born at Nottingham during 1896 ‘Archie’ had been attached to the 12TH Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment, and had been reported as missing, assumed killed in action from the 3RD of May 1917. Aged 21 years at the time of his death, Archie had been the first of two sons of William and Lois Hollingsworth of No. 41 Moorland Road that had lost their lives during the war [Bay 4].
[Coincidentally commemorated on Panel 4 of the Ploegsteert Memorial located in Western Flanders; 240442 Private Reginald Hollingsworth had lost his life on the 12TH of April 1918 whilst serving with the 4TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. Also possesing no known grave Reg had been aged twenty-six years at the time of his death]
31409 Private James Lightfoot Born in Scarborough during 1890, James had been attached to the 8TH Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment and had been reported as ‘missing, assumed killed in action’ from the 13TH of April 1917, at the time aged 27 years he had been the son of John and Sarah Lightfoot of North Street. [Bay 4 and 5].
42535 Sergeant Charles Wesley Proud Lyth. Attached to the 76TH Company of the Machine Gun Corps [Infantry], Charles had been born in Scarborough during 1885 and had been ‘assumed killed in action’ from the 5TH of May 1917. Aged 30 years at the time of his demise Charles had been the husband of Carrie Lyth of No.73 Falsgrave Road. [Bay 10].
4508 Sergeant Walter Thompson, Military Medal. Attached to the 8TH Battalion the Northumberland Fusiliers, Walter had been reported as ‘missing, assumed killed in action’ from the 27TH of November 1917. Aged 25 years at the time of his death Walter had been the son of Arnold and Esther Thompson of No. 2 Clark’s Yard Princess Street. [Bay 2-3]
[1] Royal Marines in the war of 1914-1919; Author unknown, courtesy of the Curator of the Royal Marines Museum, Eastney Barracks, Portsmouth.
[2] All the Service Records of the officers and men who had served during the First World War in the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and Royal Naval Reserve are preserved in the Public Records Office at Kew. Harry Cliff Brown’s can be located in file; PRO ADM 196/97. Robert William Normandale; PRO, ADM171/92.
[3] Despite over four years of research I have never found the name of the Normandale’s younger son, at the time of the 1901 Census of Scarborough’s population the by then widowed Elizabeth Normandale had been living at No8 Church Stairs Street with her ten years old daughter Elizabeth [born in Scarborough during February 1891], eight years old Sophia, six years old Robert William, and two years old Rhoda [who had been Baptised at St Mary’s Parish Church on September 1ST 1898], there is no mention of a second son.
[4] Colonel H.C. Wylly C.B., The Green Howards in the Great War, 1926.
Part Two
Casualties of the Battle of Arras.
[April 8TH – May 11TH 1917].
‘Good Morning, Good Morning!’
the General said, when we met
him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at
Are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for
Incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card’,
grunted Harry to Jack
as they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack’.
‘But he did for them both with his plan of attack’.
[‘The General’ composed by Siegfried Sassoon whilst at Denmark Hill Hospital, where he had been recovering from wounds received at Arras during April 1917].
R.I.P.
- Private George William Storry
- Fitter William Tindall Wiffen
- Sergeant Robert John Mason
- Private Charles Lancaster
- Private Frederick Henry Knowles
- Private John William Inchbald
- Lance Corporal Frank Royle
The ancient fortress town of Arras, the capitol of the Artios Region of Northern France, lies in a gentle depression in the Artios plain. Overlooked from the east by a semi circle of low rolling hills, from which the entrenched German Army had enjoyed uninterrupted view into the once beautiful city, [which by the spring of 1917 had been devastated by German shell-fire]. Built alongside the River Scarpe, which runs from east to west cutting a deep valley through the surrounding hills Arras had always been a major centre of communication—and a valuable asset to any would be conqueror or defender. The city had never been captured by the Germans during the ‘Great War’; nonetheless, by the winter of 1914 they had shed copious amounts of blood to wrest from the French Army the commanding position of Vimy Ridge, which lies just over three miles to the north east of the town.
The ridge, some four miles long is the highest point of the semi circle of hills standing before the town. From the allied side the ridge does not look very impressive and resembles a long bluish grey half submerged whale, however, from the German side, that is, looking from the east, Vimy appears far more formidable, being visible for miles and plunging 200 feet or more down to the Douai plain. To the southeast the ridge slopes gently down towards a village named Monchy-Le Preux. Stretching over seven miles Vimy Ridge was to become the most formidable, and notorious, German fortress on the Western Front and was to play a major part in the forthcoming British Spring Offensive of 1917, an operation which would inevitably be named the Battle of Arras.
Considered as the most bloody infantry battle of the war, the Battle of Arras had officially lasted from the 9TH of April to the 17TH of May 1917, during those thirty nine terrible days the British Expeditionary Force had suffered over a hundred and fifty nine thousand casualties, at an approximate daily rate of over four thousand officers and men, almost twice those incurred daily on the Somme and at Passchendaele.
The fate of the B.E.F. at Arras had been orchestrated by the rising new star of the French Army, General Robert Nivelle. A hero of Verdun had recently taken over the reigns of the French Armies on the Western Front from Joffre who had been steered in to retirement during the latter of December 1916.
Bristling with self-confidence, Nivelle had been certain that he had found the means of a rapid breakthrough of the German defences by the scientific handling of artillery. This, in theory, had called for a saturation bombardment followed by a ‘creeping barrage’ of considerable depth accompanied by violent infantry assaults, thus enabling his troops to penetrate the German defences and reach the enemy’s gun line in one bound, thereby achieving a decisive breakthrough or ‘rupture’ within forty-eight hours. In Nivelles plans, British and French forces would undertake preliminary attacks between the Oise and Arras to pin down German reserves, while the French would deliver the main blow on the Aisne, with a ‘mass of manoeuvre’ of some twenty-seven divisions.
At first impressed by Nivelle’s extraordinary plan, the British Commander, Haig, [who had been promoted to Field Marshal on the 27TH of December] had given the proposed scheme his general support, if not without misgivings. In effect the B.E.F. had been relegated to a subsidiary role for the proposed offensive and had been required to take over another twenty miles of front, as far as the Amiens to Roye road, to free French divisions for the anticipated ‘mass of manoeuvre’.
Sickened by the battles of attrition at Verdun and the Somme the allied politicians had succumbed to the charm and eloquence of the plausible Nivelle, and had allowed themselves to be seduced by his promise of a rapid breakthrough. Even Britain’s new Prime Minister, David Lloyd George [Herbert Asquith had resigned on the 6TH of December 1916] who would have preferred to mount an offensive on the Austria Front, had been taken in by Nivelle’s plan.
The final act before the adoption of the offensive at Arras had taken place at a meeting in London on the 15TH of January 1917. The conference had been attended by Lloyd George
Robertson [the Chief of the General Staff] Foreign Secretary Balfour, Nivelle and his staff, and the French Ambassador. Like Lloyd George, the War Cabinet had equally been impressed by Nivelle, who had a British mother and a fluent command of the language. He had been able to put over his ideas lucidly and logically, [unlike Haig, who tended to be in articulate]. He had maintained that he was not a believer in prolonged bloody battles of attrition like the Somme, he preferred one short decisive ‘rupture’, achieved within forty eight hours, followed by the destruction of the enemy’s reserves in open warfare. Lloyd George’s fears of another Somme had therefore been dispelled and it had finally been agreed that more British troops would be sent to France, and that the British would relieve the French up to the Amiens –Roye road, and that the offensive would be launched no later that the first of April. [‘Z Day’ had eventually been postponed until the ninth of April].
Once the overall plan had been adopted the gargantuan task of mounting the operation had begun. Behind the British lines huge dumps were built for the vast array of artillery being marshalled. On top of this were great quantities of other stores, food, and fodder that would be required to maintain the greatly increased numbers of troops and horses that where gathering in the Arras Sector.
Twenty-eight miles of road had to be repaired and maintained. Eleven trainloads of building materials and gravel were brought in every day. Three miles of wooden plank road were constructed, and specialist foresters were used to provide wood from local forests. The arrival of fifty thousand horses [mainly to provide the motive power for all the wagons moving the supplies] required a dramatic improvement in the water supply, new reservoirs were built, bore holes driven, forty five miles of pipeline laid and pumping stations installed to produce over 600,000 gallons of water a day. In addition, twenty-one miles of signalling cable were buried seven feet deep to protect them against all but the heaviest shells; a further sixty-six miles of cable were laid above ground.
In addition to the activities above ground had been those that had taken place below. Underneath Arras had been [and still are] large cellars and sewers. Apart from these had been, especially in the southeastern suburbs of the city, large networks of caves. These caves had originally been the quarries from which the chalk had been excavated to build the city above, and it had been an inspired decision by the British to join up the cellars to the sewers and drive tunnels from them to the caves.
Eventually two shafts had been bored which had emerged at the front line; however following the German retreat, by March only one had actually done so. Marvels of engineering and a credit to the men who had carried out the digging, by the time that the system had been completed they had been capable of sheltering over 24,000 men, lit by electric lights, equipped with a tramway, capable of piping fresh water from an under ground pumping station, and fitted with a fully equipped hospital. Their greatest value however, had been that they could be used to pass men underground and unobserved to the front line in the eastern suburbs, little more than a mile from the centre of town.
The planning of the offensive operation had been placed into the hands of General Sir Edmund Allenby, the Commander of the British Third Army. Consisting of three Corps [6TH 7TH and 17TH] Third Army’s objective had been the breaching of four heavily wired and defended defensive lines, known as the Black, Blue, Brown and Green Lines. In addition the Divisional objective had been an advance of eight miles to the ‘Drocourt-Queant Line, thus opening the way for cavalry exploitation and an advance on Cambrai. Six and Seventh Corps were to attack to the south of the River Scarpe and 17TH Corps were to assault to the north.
Zero hour had been set for half past five in the morning of Easter Monday the ninth of April for Sixth and seventeenth Corps, whilst the Seventh Corps on the extreme right of the attack would begin their assault later in the day. The Seventh ad been tasked with attacking the formidable Hindenburg Line and it had been hoped that the earlier assaults by the other two Corps would make their task easier. Timing had been crucial, the Black Line [the German front line] had to be taken by Zero Hour plus thirty five minutes, the Blue [the enemy second line] at Zero plus two hours forty four minutes to three hours, the Brown [Wancourt-Feuchy] at Zero plus ten hours, and the Green [Fampoux-Monchy] at Zero plus twelve hours.
Allenby’s original plan had included a proposal for an intense artillery bombardment of the enemies positions lasting only forty eight hours, this had been dismissed by Haig on the grounds that the wear and tear on the guns and their crew’s would be too great and there would be no guarantees that the barbed wire defences would be cut effectively. The artillery plan had therefore been revised to last over four days. The total number of guns to be employed during the operation had almost been double the number used leading up to the Somme attack of first of July the previous year, but this was for a shorter frontage, twelve miles instead of the eighteen of the Somme.
To the north of the Scarpe and Third Army had been the Canadian Corps of General Sir Henry Horne’s First Army. Commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Julian ‘Bungo’ Byng the Corps had consisted of four Canadian Divisions, the First, Second, Third, and Fourth, their objective had been the seizure of the hitherto impregnable Vimy Ridge, the capture of which had been considered vital in order to form a defensive flank for the simultaneous Third Army assault to the south.
The attack on Vimy had been planned in two stages, the four Canadian Divisions [with a Brigade from the British 5TH Division] would deliver the main thrust on a four mile front extending from the village of Ecurie to Givenchy. Given success, the northern edge of the ridge, with a prominent feature known as ‘The Pimple’, would be assaulted, as would Bois en Hache, on the southern extremity of the Notre Dame de Lorrette Ridge [in effect a continuation of Vimy Ridge but separated by the valley of the River Suchez].
The area to be attacked had represented the shape of a triangle, with the apex pointing north –westwards, the Canadians on the western arm and the summit of the ridge, the objective on the eastern. Thus at the base of the triangle the advance would have to cover some four thousand yards of ground, in contrast to the attack at the apex where the distance had narrowed to about seven hundred yards. To say that the enemy position had been strongly defended would be an understatement, heavily wired, studded with concrete machine gun emplacements and honeycombed with deep dugouts the enemy position on Vimy Ridge had been a veritable fortress.
The Canadians, exhausted by their ordeal during the Somme Offensive, especially during the battle for Courcelles had arrived in the area towards the end of October 1916. Initially the formation [minus the Fourth Division, which had moved north at the very end of November] had served in the Souchez Sector, where the Divisions had ‘reorganised’ and waited for reinforcements to arrive from England. By late November, Byng, their British Commanding Officer had been briefed by General Horne regarding the Allied offensive plans for the spring of 1917 and the part that the Canadians were to play in the forthcoming battle.
Byng had immediately set to training his men for the task before them. A contingent of high ranking officers from the Canadian Corps had visited the Verdun Sector to see what lessons had been learned by the French during the ten months of fighting that had raged there. The result of this visit was the conclusion that advancing in waves was no longer suitable. There had then been a greater possibility of flexibility with more experienced artillery, and in addition, many of the non commissioned officers and junior officers had gained considerably more battle experience during the time that they had been in France. This meant that small groups would be allowed greater initiative; objectives would be a natural feature and not just a line of trenches, which in all probability had been blasted by shellfire and had been nothing more than a series of joined up shell holes.
The Canadians had also adopted a rigorous policy of trench raiding which had kept their enemy in a perpetual state of alert. These raids had often caused considerable casualties amongst the Germans as well as severe damage to his trenches and dugout systems; in addition they had built upon the experience of junior commanders and their knowledge of the front that faced them. The damage, however, had not always been one sided and on many occasions the Canadians had suffered considerable casualties during their trips into enemy territory which had often been carried out at Company [about a hundred and sixty men], and on occasions Battalion [over a thousand men] strength.
At midday on the twentieth of March the Canadians had begun their first phase of ‘softening up’ the German defences atop Vimy Ridge. On that day half of the Corps two hundred and forty five heavy guns and howitzers plus four hundred and eighty field guns [the other half would join in thirteen days later] had begun firing the first of over a million shells that would transform Vimy Ridge into a moonscape of joined up shell holes The task of the heavy guns had been to engage the enemy’s batteries, which could otherwise have caused major problems to the Canadian advance, and in addition, enfilade the German trenches facing the Canadian left flank. The field guns had been given the task of cutting the thickets of barbed wire protecting the Germans positions. Also taking part in the preliminary bombardment had been the 280 Colt and Vickers medium machine guns of the Canadian Machine Gun Corps, which had been used principally for harassing fire during the night. They had swept communication trenches, approaches across the open, dumps, gaps in the wire, and hostile batteries of German field artillery that had been emplaced in woods on the eastern slope of the ridge.
Whilst the artillery had hammered away at Vimy the infantry had trained for the attack with the aid of a large model of the ridge which had been reproduced with the aid of aerial photographs. Replicas of trench systems, bunkers strong-points had been erected in the Division’s rest areas had been captured time and time again until the assault had been perfected to such a degree that each soldier had known off by heart the part he was to play in the assault.
After a frosty dawn on Easter Sunday, the 8TH of April had bloomed into a beautiful spring day. The Canadians had spent the day in their concentration areas in the woodlands near the villages of Maroeuil, Mont St Eloy, and Villers au Bois, where throughout the morning groups of men had gathered to knell bareheaded before their unit’s Padre to receive communion. Other men had chosen this time to make their final adjustments to their kit. A general order had been issued by G.H.Q. which had forbidden the men to wear their great coats during the assault on the premise that the garment once sodden with rain would have added unbearably to the crushing weight of equipment which the men would already be burdened with. On the day of the attack the average soldier would be carrying a rifle and bayonet, entrenching tool, full water bottle, waterproof sheet, and haversack [on the back instead of a pack] with two days rations and a few ‘necessaries’.
In addition each man would be taking with him a hundred and seventy rounds of ammunition, two hand grenades, one flare and three empty sandbags. A number of men would also be carrying either a pick or shovel, [in which case the entrenching tool had been discarded], and wire cutters. With uniform and steel helmet the small or slightly built man had certainly carried half of his own body weight, however, as had undoubtedly happened before, most of the troops would rid themselves of their cargoes once the advance had begun.
During the evening as soon as it had become dark enough to hide their movements thirty thousand Canadian infantrymen had begun their three miles march to their assembly positions at the front. From Arras the route taken by the Canadians to the front line had been via two of the longest tunnels in the sector, ‘Goodman [over 1,883 yards] and ‘Grange’ [1,343yards]. They had arrived completely unseen by the Germans and had arranged themselves according to their respective Divisions.
On the extreme right of the line [south] had been the First Division. Commanded by Major General Arthur W. Currie, a former British Columbia real estate agent, their front had extended for 2,000 yards between the village of Ecurie and Neuville St Vaast, the unit’s objective had been [with 51ST Highland Division] the capture of Hill 140. Next in line had been the Second Division [Major General H.E.Burstall] it’s front had been a distance of 1,400yards from the left flank of First Division to the Neuville—Petit Vimy road, their objective [along with the 13TH Brigade of the British 5th Division, and eight tanks, which had eventually played little part in the operation due to the poor condition of the terrain and mechanical failures] had been the capture of the village of Thelus.
The Third Division [Major General L.J. Lipsett] had been the next in line. Their front had extended between the Neuville—Petit Vimy road and the western corner of some orchards outlying the Bois de la Folie, the unit’s objective had been the capture of a group of strongly held positions at La Folie Farm. Fourth Division [Major General D, Watson] on the extreme left [north] of the line had probably had the hardest task of all, the capture of Hill 145, the highest point of Vimy Ridge, and the formidable position known to the British as ‘The Pimple’.
The cold and clear weather of Easter Sunday had deteriorated in the early hours of Easter Monday bringing snow and a strong northwesterly wind. At about 3am the men had breakfasted on bacon, bread, butter, tea, and oranges. Following this they had been issued with a ration of rum, to keep out the cold and fortify them for their task ahead. Just before Zero Hour on the ninth of April, all along the battlefront many of the Canadians had crawled out into No Mans Land and lay down in long rows beyond the British wire. Others had lined the steps of the deep dugouts and tunnels, whilst some had waited as they had done throughout the night shivering in congested trenches knee deep in mud, eyes straining at the luminous hands on their watches as the last seconds before the attack had slipped away.
A few precious seconds before the beginning of the assault, the artillery bombardment, which had been pounding the Germans positions continuously day and night since the fourth of April had abruptly stopped:
‘Only a few seconds to go, then suddenly a complete silence, an absolute cessation of the intense roar, a stillness punctuated and emphasised by the barking of trench mortars up and down the lines; every gun had stopped firing. That sudden silence was more terrifying than the most reverberating explosion. It had the effect of making men feel that they were losing their balance on the edge of the abyss…it did not last long. At 5-30 to the second the earth shook as the mines exploded with a muffled roar [the Royal Engineers had detonated two mines under the German positions] and every gun n the fifteen-mile front of attack and beyond it opened fire with a clamour such as had probably never been heard in the world…The air screamed as it was torn by a thousand shells. Miles up the great projectiles hummed their mighty drone. Lower down through each layer of air the shells flew according to their kind, until, quite above the lines of men closing in behind the barrage, the missiles of light mortars and the bullets of machine guns hissed…. Within three minutes of the time it took our men to form up behind the barrage, a new kind of illumination was added to the fantastic scene. For miles upon miles, all along the German lines hundreds of flares went up. Red, white orange, the distress signals shot high, falling back in sprays of multicoloured rain. The German infantry was begging for support the British were upon them’… [1]
Before the British artillery had had a chance to ‘lift’ the leading companies of Canadian infantry had begun their advance into the gloom of early morning, the men sliding and skating through the slippery mud and trying to avoid the many water filled shell holes. By this time the snowfall had become heavier, a help rather than a hindrance to the attackers as it been blown onto their backs and into the faces of the enemy. The blizzard had also lulled the German’s into a false sense of security, believing that no one in their right minds would attack in such atrocious weather.
Arthur Currie’s First Division had attacked with three Brigades [1ST, 2ND, and 3RD] each comprising of three battalions of infantry [over 9,000men in all]. On the right of the assault had been the 2ND Brigade, they had reached their first objective and rushed the sentries before the garrison had emerged from their deep dugouts. Leaving parties to guard the stairways until ‘moppers-up’ had arrived to deal with the occupants, the leading wave, virtually unscathed, had dashed on behind the ‘creeping barrage’ towards the next line of trenches. Meanwhile the Third Brigade had come up against machine gun fire that had caused many casualties before the three guns had been silenced. The six battalions had, nonetheless, pressed forward to the second trench, and though they had begun to receive more frequent casualties, the dugouts had been captured after stiff opposition had been beaten down with the aid of rifle grenades and Lewis Guns [light machine guns], many fired from the hip.
In the third trench the 14TH [Montreal] Battalion had come under heavy fire from four machine guns, which had inflicted grievous casualties, these guns had eventually been silenced by grenades, rifle fire, and bayonets. The men of the 16TH[Canadian Scottish] had also come up against strong resistance in this same system of trenches, and it had been here that Private William J. Milne had subsequently been awarded [posthumously] the Victoria Cross for the capture single handed, of two machine guns. After crossing the Arras—Lens road, which by this time had been indistinguishable, due to mud and debris, the two battalions had again suffered considerable losses until they put down intense resistance in a sunken track that had branched off the main road towards Roclincourt. Nonetheless, by just after 6am the division had been in possession of the ‘Zwolfer-Graben’, their first objective.
After a pause of forty minutes the attack on the division’s second objective, the ‘Intermediate Line’ had begun. The trench had been considered a formidable obstacle, but the snow, together with a smoke barrage had screened the Canadian attack until the last minute, the ‘Official History’ records;
‘The defenders who’s spirits seem to have been weakened by the machine gun fire barrage maintained during the forty minute pause were quickly overcome. Those who were not captured retired down the communication trench as fast as the mud would permit’… [2]
Shortly after 7am the division had captured their second objective, except for five hundred yards of trench to their right that had eventually been taken by 7-40 by the 1ST [Ontario] Battalion, which had been supported by 1ST/4TH Gordon Highlanders from the British Fifty First [Highland] Division.
The exploits of the Second Division had virtually mirrored the First. The 18TH[Western Ontario] on the right of Fourth Brigade had suffered considerable casualties to machine gun fire, the crew of one of which had been bayoneted single handed by Sergeant Ellis W. Sifton [he had also been killed later, and awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously].
North of the Thelus road, the 19TH [Central Ontario] Battalion of Fourth Brigade and the 24TH[Victoria Rifles], with the 26TH [New Brunswick] Battalion from Fifth Brigade had overrun the enemy’s first line of dugouts. On approaching the second line the force had come under the inevitable heavy machine gun fire which; ‘only a series of acts of individual courage and initiative prevented a serious check’**. Despite this initial setback just after 6am the survivors of the four battalions, after a steady uphill advance had reached the line of the third trench, the Division’s first objective.
Once the ‘creeping barrage’ had moved on again the attack had been renewed, the support battalions of each brigade leading the advance. On the seven hundred yards of frontage of Fourth Brigade the 21ST[Eastern Ontario] Battalion had pushed on rapidly bombing two machine gun posts as they went, which had been situated in the ruined village of Les Tilleuls, the unit’s final objective. Here the Brigade had captured a field gun and over a hundred German troops. Meanwhile the 25TH [Nova Scotia Rifles] Battalion of 5TH Brigade, driving all before it had reached its objective, a position known as ‘Turko-Graben’, where, with the aid of the French Canadian ‘moppers up’ of the 22ND [Canadien Francais] Battalion had captured some 400 prisoners and four machine guns. By this stage the two Divisions had only been half way up Vimy Ridge, ahead lay the village of Thelus and the rounded summit of Hill 135, looming through the snow and smoke, the objectives of the Third and Fourth Divisions.
The attack by the Third Division had been spearheaded by the Eighth Brigade, on the right, with 1ST, 2ND, and 4TH Canadian Mounted Rifles [acting as infantry], and on the left by the Seventh Brigade, consisting of the Royal Canadian Regiment, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, and the 42ND Battalion [5TH Royal Highlanders of Canada]. The leading companies advance had been so fast that they had given the German machine gunners no chance to come into action, catching the enemy completely unaware they had soon rounded up over a hundred prisoners, many of whom had been half dressed, in the ‘Schwaben Tunnel’, which had been an entrance into the second trench Despite the appalling condition of the ground their advance covered by a smoke screen, and carried out with grim determination, had reached the enemy’s third trench in the allotted time.
After the forty-minute break for reorganisation and consolidation, the attack had been renewed by the rear companies that had passed through towards the Divisions second, and final objective, the Bois de la Folie. At this point in the attack some confusion had been caused by the sleet and snow blotting out landmarks, this had resulted in a number of men from the Second Division swinging across the front of the 1ST Mounted Rifles, thus causing considerable disorder. Partly owing to the delay two guns teams of the 7TH Canadian Machine Gun Company had reached the right of the objective, the Arras –Lens road, before the infantry. These two guns had taken up positions near a ruined house by the roadside, and had opened fire on a large party of Germans assembling a hundred yards away. The gunners had later claimed that they had inflicted over a hundred casualties on the enemy.
Suspected of being a nest of machine guns, La Folie Farm had been given ‘special attention’ by the British artillery, by the time that it had been overrun, without opposition, by the 2ND Canadian Rifles it had been reduced to a pile of stones and rubble.
Opposite the 7TH Brigade, the enemy’s resistance had not stiffened until its troops had entered the Bois de la Folie. It had been there that the Brigade had suffered considerable loss before some dugouts and broken sections of trench had been cleared. Soon afterwards German reinforcements, hastily drawn from the 262ND Reserve Regiment, had arrived from the nearby town of Douai and had attempted to bomb the Royal Canadian Regiment out of their newly won trenches in the woods, whilst another concerted attack had been launched at the 4TH Mounted Rifles. Both of these attacks had been repulsed, albeit with grievous casualties.
By 7.30am the western edge of the wood had been in the hands of Third Division. Although the wood had been heavily shelled, the battered trees had formed a screen which had hidden the view of the plain two hundred feet below, and fallen branches had concealed a number of German snipers who had begun to harass the Canadians whilst they had set about consolidating their newly gained positions. Up to this point in the divisions assault, casualties had been considered fairly light, however, under fire from concealed enemy riflemen the toll had begun to mount alarmingly.
The Fourth Division on the extreme left of the assault had had, as already noted, the most difficult task, the seizure of the summit of Vimy Ridge, Hill 145. Only seven hundred yards from the Canadian front line, the capture of the rounded summit of the hill had been the ultimate test for the Canadians that day. A veritable labyrinth of deep dugouts, and superbly sited machine gun nests, the Official History describes;
‘The summit itself was trenched about like a fortress. A double tier surrounded it, the trenches on the northern and southern sides being constructed for the purposes both of fire and communication. The field of fire was almost ideal, shell-holes providing the only shelter for the attack. The trenches had been battered, but near the front line there were deep mine workings which secured the garrison from artillery fire. On the reverse slope there was also an extensive system of deep dugouts [the Hangstellung] that protected the reserve companies’…[2]
The initial assault on 145 [it’s height in metres above sea level] had been made by Brigadier General V.W. Odlum’s 11TH Brigade using two battalions, the 87TH [Canadian Grenadier Guards] and the 102ND [Central Ontario]. Their first objective had been the seizure of a trench system known to the British as ‘Batter Trench’, which had ran alongside the road on the nearside of the crest. The 102ND had captured the front dug outs by surprise and had carried on up the bleak hillside and reached the summit with very few casualties. The assault by the Grenadiers, in complete contrast had not been so successful. Half of the battalion [over six hundred men] had become casualties of machine gun fire from Batter Trench in the first minute of leaving their start point [Tottenham Tunnel], despite this catastrophe the survivors had tried to rush the strong point, but their efforts had come to nothing due to uncut barbed wire. The right of the 75TH [Central Ontario] Battalion which should have been supporting the Grenadiers, had also come under withering machine gun fire, they had been unable to leave their assembly trenches.
The Germans had then turned their attention on the Canadians on the flanks who had been struggling to negotiate the dreadfully shell pocked terrain. The left of the 87TH supported by that of the 75TH had gone forward, and had also suffered heavy losses to machine gun fire from the uncaptured sector. This had caused a check in the Canadian advance which had given the garrison of the German second trench time to get into action and their concentrated fire had broken up the waves of the attack which had still been pressing forward on either flank. Soon the whole of 4TH Division’s attack had begun to fade. To the north a smoke screen had been put down over ‘The Pimple’ in the hope of giving the attackers on the left a chance of capturing the northern flank of Hill 145, in the event the smoke screen had cleared too soon, posing an additional threat to the Canadians, that of enfilade machine gun fire.
At 3-15pm, in a desperate bid to gain a result before the onset of darkness the Officer Commanding Fourth Division [Major General David Watson], had sent forward two companies [about 480 officers and men] of the newly arrived, and untried in battle 85TH[Nova Scotia Highlanders] Battalion to assist the beleaguered 11TH Brigade.
Odlum, in his Headquarters in Tottenham Tunnel, had by this time no idea of what had been happening at the front due to the non-return of all the runners that had been sent forward to gather information. All that had been at his disposal in the way of reinforcements had been the two companies of Nova Scotians who had hurriedly been given the task of capturing Batter Trench, which had practically held up the whole division throughout the day.
The Nova Scotians had lay in the thick mud waiting for the promised twelve-minute bombardment that had been expected to subdue any resistance in Batter Trench. In the event the bombardment had never materialised. Nonetheless, at Zero Hour [5.45pm] the men of ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies had risen from their trenches to calmly walk towards their objective. The incident is vividly described by Nicholls;
‘In the watery light of the setting sun which had broken through behind them, the single line of men advanced as fast as the mud would permit. Crossing the German front trench, now in Canadian hands, they pressed for Batter Trench. Astounded at the effrontery of this little group attempting to dislodge them, the weary Prussian defenders automatically clattered back the cocking handles of the heavy Maxims and methodically began to tac-tac along the line of khaki stumbling towards them. Watchers in the wings could clearly see the steam rising from the overworked weapons, and hear the shouts of the two company commanders as they urged their boys forward’...[3]
It looked a hopeless task. Men were falling into the mud as the bullets found them. The line grew pathetically thin. Suddenly a rifle bomber form ‘C’ Company, Corporal Milton Curll, fired off a bomb from the hip as he advanced. It was a lucky shot. The grenade exploded a few feet in front of the most dangerous machine gun, killing the crew. With a hundred yards to go, other bombers followed suit. With fifty yards to go, an incredible five machine guns were still blazing away from the top of undemolished dugout entrances. Suddenly the gunners turned and ran for the crest. The brave remnants of the Nova Scotians let out a great cheer that must have been heard by Odlum in the Tottenham Tunnel. They gave pursuit—right to the crest of Hill 145’…[3]
By the evening of the ninth the whole of Hill 145 apart from the ‘Hang Stellung’ and Hill120 [The Pimple], both of which would be captured in the following three days of savage fighting, had been in Canadian hands. The capture of the ridge had been considered by the British top brass as an outstanding feat of arms on the part of the Canadians, the jubilant Commander of First Army had transmitted a signal to the officers and men of the Canadian Corps on the 12TH of April;
‘The Vimy Ridge has been regarded as a position of very great strength; the Germans have considered it to be impregnable. To have carried this position with so little loss testifies soundness of plan, thoroughness of preparation, dash and determination in execution, and devotion to duty on the part of all concerned. The 9TH of April will be an historic day in the annals of the British Empire’…
The ‘little loss’ that Horne had mentioned refers to the 11, 297 Canadians who had been been killed, wounded, or reported as missing between the 9TH and 14TH of April [up until the 11TH of April the Germans had incurred 6,604 casualties]. Amongst them had been a soldier who had celebrated his twenty sixth birthday on the eve of the attack;
174684 Private George William Storry.
Killed by shellfire on Monday the ninth of April, in the fighting at Bois la Folie, George Storry had been born in Scarborough on the eighth of April 1891 at No 28 Ewart Street. The youngest of two sons of Ada and ‘Ashpalter’s Labourer’ William Storry, George, popularly known as ‘Jona’, had been a pupil of Falsgrave Road School between the ages of four and fourteen, during 1905 he had left the institution to become an apprentice carpenter with the North Eastern Railway Company. Based at the engine sheds that had been situated alongside Scarborough’s Seamer Road.
Storry had remained with the N.E.R. until 1911 when he had left the town for Liverpool, where, armed with a Third Class ticket and hopes of a better life in the burgeoning ‘Colonies’ he had embarked in the White Star Lines 14, 878 tons S.S. Megantic for the ten days sea journey to Canada. Storry had subsequently landed on Canadian soil at Montreal, and had eventually settled at Hamilton, in the Province of Ontario where he had found work as a carpenter with a local builder.
‘Jona’ had enlisted into the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force at Hamilton on the 8TH of September 1915. At the time the twenty four years old, according to his medical record, had stood at five feet seven and a half inches, weighed a hundred and fifty five pounds, and had had a dark complexion, brown hair, and brown eyes, and in general had, been of ‘good physical development’.
Following enlistment, Storry, like all Canadian recruits had been sent to Valcartier Camp, a huge city of tents on the outskirts of Quebec, where he had received the customary twelve weeks of infantry training. Whilst at Valcartier ‘Jona’ had become familiar and competent with the Colt Medium Machine Gun and had eventually been transferred from the 86TH Infantry Battalion to the 86TH Machine Gun [Overseas] Battalion.
The Battalion had eventually embarked for service abroad at Halifax, Nova Scotia in the 24,500tons converted White Star Line Steamship ‘Adriatic’, which had sailed on the 19TH of May 1916 crammed with over five thousand Canadian troops bound for Britain. Ten days later the Adriatic had arrived at Liverpool. From there the Canadians had been transferred to the main Canadian Depot in Britain, which had been situated at Shorncliffe Camp, near the Kentish town of Folkestone. Storry had remained there until the seventh of October 1916, during this time he had made one return visit to his parents in Scarborough, who by this time had been living at No6 Beaconsfield Street, it was to be the last that they would see of their son.
On the seventh of October Storry had been included in a draft of reinforcements bound for the Western Front, following the short sea journey from Folkestone to Le Havre he and his comrades had reported to the Canadian Machine Gun Corps Base Depot at Camiers, where they had awaited transfer to an active unit. Storry and seven other men had eventually been allocated to the Seventh M.G. Company on the eighth of October, joining the unit during the afternoon of the twenty first, the Company’s War Diary’ records; ‘eight other ranks reported from Machine Gun Base Camiers, in the evening’…[4]
At the time the Company had been in reserve [with the Third Canadian Division] in the Souchez Sector at Petit Houvin, however, at 6am the following day the unit had marched a distance of twenty six kilometres to the village of Gamligneul, where they had arrived soaking wet from torrential rain during the evening. Whilst there the men had been billeted in what, their ‘War Diary’ had termed, ‘an old bath- house’. During the morning of the following day the weary soldiers had again been on the march, on that occasion to the village of Ecoivres, where they had again moved into billets.
Rest for the foot sore had, however, been brief, during the evening of the same day the four sections of the unit had marched to the front line near Neuville St Vaast [opposite Vimy Ridge]. The company had remained in this sector for the remainder of 1916, alternating between the front line and their billets at Ecoivres. On Christmas Day, following Church services, the War Diarist had noted the Company’s nine officers and two hundred and fifteen other ranks had feasted on ‘turkey, goose, plum pudding and bottled beer, thanks to our energetic canteen’. There had then followed; ‘concerts at the billets. Everybody cheerful as they feel it will be their last Xmas in this country’…
Early in February 1917 the Company had moved to Bray, where they had remained until the 21ST of March, when the unit had marched to the village of Gouy Sevriens, to the west of Souchez, where the officers and men had taken up residence in the Chateau there.
Throughout March and early April the various units of the Seventh Brigade had practised their roles in the forthcoming assault. ‘B’ Section of the Seventh M.G. Company had been allocated to the 42ND[Royal Canadian Regiment] Battalion, both units had rehearsed their assault on Bois de la Folie in marked out fields near the village of Houdain.
At 5pm on the fourth of April the men of 7TH Canadian Machine Gun Company had left their camp to proceed to the front where they had carried on training until the ninth, when they had followed the barrage towards Vimy Ridge. By the onset of darkness the Seventh Company had suffered eleven other ranks [including Storry] killed, and sixteen wounded.
George and Ada Storry had received a letter from ‘Jona’s’ Commanding Officer [Lieutenant Burnham] on Wednesday the eighteenth of April informing them of his loss at Vimy Ridge, the news had been transmitted in ‘The Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the 20TH 1917;
‘Scarborough Canadian killed’.
‘Mr. George Storry, 6, Beaconsfield Street, has just received news to the effect that his son, Private G.W. Storry, of a Canadian Machine Gun Battalion, was killed during the attack on Vimy Ridge. His death took place on Easter Monday, and he had celebrated his 26TH birthday on Easter Monday. His Lieutenant pays a high tribute to him. His Sergeant says that Storry and three other men were on the point of leaving a shell hole when a shell landed in the midst of the group, killing Private Storry and another man, [Newfoundland born Lance Corporal Michael Burrows] and wounding the rest. Private Storry, previous to going to Canada, worked for six years at the engine sheds on Seamer Road, and he was well known and liked in Scarborough’…
The remains of Private Storry and Lance Corporal Burrows had eventually been scooped into two empty sandbags and buried in marked grave near to where the two had died. During 1919 the graves had been located by The Imperial War Graves Commission, who had re-interred the remains of ‘Jona’ Storry with 500 Canadian and British casualties
[Forty of which are unidentified] in Bois Carre British Cemetery, near to the village of Thelus [for some unknown reason those of Michael Burrows had been buried in La Chaudiere Military Cemetery near Vimy], his last resting place is situated in Section 5, Plot A, Grave 4 of the Cemetery.
Three days after the fourth anniversary of ‘Jona’ Storry’s death, on the 12TH of April 1921, the Lord Bishop of Hull had dedicated a memorial in St James with Holy Trinity Church bearing the names of over fifty Parishioners, including Storry, who had lost their lives during the war of 1914-19. The memorial takes the form of a carved oak pulpit and altar rail as well as a carved oak ‘Rood Screen’, which separates the naïve from choir. The names of those killed are listed on oak panels at the foot of the screen.
In addition to the Memorial in St James’s, Storry’s name is commemorated in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [in Section N. Vault 9A], on a [in 2003] Gravestone that bears the inscription;
‘Out in France in an unknown grave our dear soldier son lies sleeping. For King and Country his life he gave into his saviours keeping’.
‘Reburied 1919 in Boise Carre British Cemetery, Thelus, N.N.E. of Arras, France’.
The Memorial also bears the names of the remainder of the Storry family. Elder brother James who had served throughout the war in the British Mercantile Marine, he had died at sea on the 27TH of March 1939 at the age of 51 years and subsequently buried at sea off Colombo. Ada Storry had died on the 8TH of October 1947 at the age of 77 years; she had been buried three days later. ‘Jona’s’ father George had died at the age of ninety-one years following ‘a long and painful illness patiently borne’, on Wednesday the 14TH of February 1962 at his home at No 6 Beaconsfield Street.
Extremely isolated and rarely visited, Bois Carre British Cemetery, on the outskirts of Thelus is also the last resting place of another soldier who had been a native of Scarborough; 81595 Fitter William Tindall Wiffen.
Attached to the 12TH Battery of the 28TH Brigade of Royal field Artillery, William ha d been born in Scarborough during 1886, and had been the eldest son of Eliza and Joseph Wiffen, who, by 1917 had been a ‘labourer employed by Scarborough Borough Council, living in the town at No 21 James Street. Although Scarborough born, William had spent most of his formative years living on the outskirts of Scarborough in the village of Cayton, and had been a pupil of Cayton Village Board School. Married to Miss Alice Creek in Scarborough’s St Mary’s Parish Church on the 30TH of April 1910, by the outbreak of war in 1914 the pair had been living in Scarborough at No 10 Wrea Lane, with their son Walter Norman, who had been born in Scarborough early in 1913.
Killed in action during the Arras Offensive on Tuesday the seventeenth of April, the news of Wiffen’s death had appeared in the ‘Scarborough Casualties’ section of the ‘Mercury’ of Friday the twenty seventh;
‘One of four soldier sons killed’.
‘Gunner Wm. Tindall Wiffen, R.F.A., whose parents reside at 21, James Street, Scarborough, has been killed in action by a shell on the 17TH. Thirty-one years of age in March last he leaves a widow and three children. He formally resided in Wrea Lane, but latterly his wife has gone to keep house for her brother—the later having lost his wife—in Lincolnshire.
Before he joined the army [at Scarborough] in 1915, Gunner Wiffen was employed by the Clifton Street Aerated Water Company. He is one of four soldier brothers, two of whom are serving in Salonica, and the third in France. One of these joined in September 1914, a month after war broke out, a second joined the following month, and the third in November 1914.
Gunner Wiffen would also have joined at that time, but he was rejected on account of an eye. He had an accident at his work, and it was feared that, for a time that he would lose the sight of an eye. Happily this was not so, but he was not taken into the army in 1914, but a year later he was accepted.
Mr. Wiffen, Senior, has been in the employ of the Corporation for a number of years, he and his wife coming to live at Scarborough from Cayton 17 years ago’… [5]
One of the original sixty-one casualties of the Arras Offensive to be buried in Bois Carre British Cemetery, Wiffen’s Grave is located in Plot 1, Section F, [Grave 2]. Following the death of her husband, Alice Wiffen had remained in Lincolnshire; her last known residence is recorded by The Commonwealth War Graves Commission as being in the village of Holbeach Hurn, near Holbeach, Lincolnshire.
Until the present day Vimy Ridge had remained in Canadian hands. After the war the by then famous ridge had been presented to the people of Canada; ‘The free gift in perpetuity of the French Nation to the people of Canada’.
The Canadians had turned Vimy Ridge into a National Park, which Stephen O’ Shea, in his book ‘Back to the front’ describes as; ‘a showcase of Canadian nationalism in an unlovely corner of France’, which is dominated by a huge memorial to commemorate the Canadian dead of the Great War. The construction of the Memorial on Vimy had begun during 1925. Eleven years later, on the 26TH of July 1936, the immense construction standing on the site of Hill 145 had been unveiled by King Edward the Eighth before a great gathering of veterans of the battle.
The Memorial consisting of two 270 feet tall pylons of Yugoslavian ‘Trau’ stone can be seen for miles around and commemorates the 60,000 Canadians who had lost their lives during the war of 1914 to 1918. On the walls are engraved the names of 11,285 Canadians who had fallen in France, and for whom there is no known grave [The names of the 7,024 Canadians missing in Flanders are commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres]. Amongst them are the names of two Canadians known to have been born in Scarborough who had been killed during the Arras Offensive.
447651 Sergeant Robert Johnson Mason. Born in Scarborough on the 22ND of November 1887 at No 2 Somerset Terrace, Robert had been the youngest son [brother Thomas had been born in 1882] of Charlotte and Cab Proprietor, Thomas Mason. A pupil from the age of four of Scarborough’s Central Board School, which had been in Trafalgar Street West, by the age of thirteen Robert had left the institution for work as a Telegraph Messenger, however, he had shortly afterwards left the Post Office to begin an apprenticeship as a fitter with the Scarborough Gas Company.
At the age of twenty one Mason had become a qualified pipe fitter, and had married Scarborough born [in 1889] Elizabeth Dunn, the daughter of Elizabeth and James Dunn, who had resided at ‘Ashburn Lodge’, a house in Scarborough’s Valley Road which stands in the shadow of a railway bridge, which in those days had been known as ‘Five Arches’. During 1909 Robert and Elizabeth Mason had joined the thousands of Britons who had quit their native shores for the ‘New World’ in the years immediately before the war to settle in Canada’s Alberta Province, where they had lived in the burgeoning city of Calgary, at No 2127 16TH Street West.
By the outbreak of war the couple had been the parents of two children, at this time Robert had been employed as a gas fitter by the City of Calgary Gas Company. Having served for three years in the Scarborough based Territorial Force, Second Volunteer Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment and two in the newly [1907] formed Fifth Battalion, Mason had been no stranger to military service. On the 30TH of September 1915 he had enlisted at Calgary for the duration of the war into the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. At the time the twenty eight years old recruit had stood at five feet eight inches tall, had had a fair complexion, hazel eyes, and fair hair.
Following training at Valcartier Camp, Robert Mason had been assigned to the 50TH [Calgary] Battalion of infantry [commanded by Lieutenant Colonel E.G. Mason] which by the end of 1915 had been training and making preparations to join the Tenth Brigade of the brand new Fourth Canadian Division, which had eventually arrived in France during August 1916 to spend it’s first period of trench service in the Ypres Sector. The Fourth Division [with the remainder of the Canadian Corps] had been sent southwards to the Somme Sector late in August 1916 and had been posted around the notorious Pozieres and Mouquet Farm Sector, where they had joined Australian troops who had been engaged in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Somme Offensive since mid July.
By this time Mason had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant and had eventually gone into action for the first time with the Fiftieth Battalion near to the village of Courcelette during the last operation to be undertaken by the Canadians on the Somme, in an attack on a trench system known to the British as ‘Desire Trench’. The assault had taken place during the early hours of the eighteenth of November, despite the pitiful state of the ground and atrocious weather conditions the trench had been taken, however, the Canadians had eventually been driven out by repeated German counter attacks and heavy machine gun fire. The operation had cost Battalion thirteen officers, and two hundred and three other rank casualties.
Fortunate to have survived the fighting at Courcelette, the twenty-nine years old Robert Mason’s luck had eventually ran out on Hill 145 on Tuesday the tenth of April. Although the Germans had been swept from the summit of the hill, they had remained in control of their reserve position, the formidable ‘Hangstellung’. Originally the objective of the 11TH Brigade, the positions capture had in the end been given to Mason’s 10TH Brigade. An account of the action in which he had died is to be found on pages 342 –3 of the ‘Official History’
‘As the battalions of the 11TH Brigade were exhausted, Major General Watson, commanding the 4TH Canadian Division, had called upon the 10TH Brigade [Brigadier General E. Hilliam] to carry the attack through to the final objectives of the 11TH Brigade. The 46TH and 47TH Battalions being already engaged, the task was allotted to the 44TH [Manitoba] and 50TH [Calgary] Battalions. Soon after midday they crossed Zouave Valley in artillery formation, and about 2pm deployed along the road that traversed the near side of the hill. The barrage, a repetition of that fired on the previous day in this sector, opened at 3pm on the Hangstellung, and both battalions, charging down with a determination that would take no denial, entered this trench almost immediately after the barrage had lifted. On the right, parties of the 44TH pressed on through the northern end of the Bois de la Folie. Within thirty minutes the brilliant action of the two battalions had cleared all the dugouts in both trenches of the Hangstellung, capturing 150 unwounded prisoners and several machine guns. They had, however, suffered heavy casualties both in their rush down the hill and in the subsequent close fighting, the Calgary Battalion having lost no fewer than 11 officers and 218 rank and file’…
The War Diary of the Fiftieth states the Battalion had suffered five officers killed, six wounded. Fifty-seven other ranks had been killed outright; a hundred and twenty nine were wounded. Further thirty-one men, including Mason, were reported as missing. Despite numerous post war searches of the battlefield Robert Mason’s body had never been recovered.
During the post war years Mason’s widow, Elizabeth, had remarried [Wentworth], her last recorded address [by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission] is 2316, Wall Street, Vancouver, British Columbia.
At the outbreak of the Great War Robert’s elder sister [born in 1885], Emily Lois, had been the wife of George Hardwick Merryweather, the proprietor of Merryweather’s ‘Cheap Food Stores’ and Post Office, which had stood on the corner of Prospect Road and Columbus Ravine [in 2003 the site is occupied by the’Nishat Spice Balti House’], where during the morning of Wednesday the 16TH of December, the day that units of the German High Seas Fleet had bombarded the town, the couple had been opening their shop as usual when the enemy’s shells had begun crashing into the town.
Upon hearing the ‘commotion’ outside Emily had gone into the street with the idea of offering shelter in the shop’s cellar to some friends who had lived a few doors away. However, moments later she had returned with the friends, and had been standing in her shop doorway when a shell had struck the main pillar of the door peppering the thirty years old with shrapnel, she had died from the effects of her injuries shortly afterwards. Emily Merryweather had been buried amidst much publicity three days later in Section J. [Row 7, Grave 6] the nearby Manor Road Cemetery; unfortunately by 2003 her last resting place is not marked.
Robert Mason’s Scarborough born father, Tom Mason, had died on the 21ST of October 1899 at the age of sixty years. Lincolnshire born Charlotte Mason had died at her home at 141 Prospect Road on the 26TH of March 1925 at the age of seventy-six years; both of them are also buried in Manor Road Cemetery, [Section O, Row 7, Grave 7]. Robert’s elder brother, Thomas H. [born in 1882] had served throughout the war in the Yorkshire Regiment, he had survived to return to Scarborough to take up his old employment of Bricklayer and had eventually died in the town at the age of fifty-five years on the fourth of October 1937. He is also buried in Section O, of Manor Road Cemetery.
79759 Private Charles Lancaster. Born in Scarborough on the 5TH of December 1876, Charles had been the second of three sons of Mary Ann and Alfred Lancaster, a water colour artist and photographer, who had lived for many years at ‘Richmond House’, No 8 St Martin’s Square, on Scarborough’s then fashionable South Cliff [the house in 2003 is a block of flats]. An upholsterer by trade, Lancaster had emigrated to Canada during 1908 where he had established an upholstery business in Calgary, Alberta.
The unmarried Lancaster had enlisted into the Army at Calgary on the 4TH of November 1914, and had knocked six years off his age by stating his date of birth as the 5TH of December 1882. At the time the allegedly thirty two years old [the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s records incorrectly state that Lancaster had been age 52 years at the time of his death in May 1917] Charles had stood at five feet seven and a half inches tall, had had a ‘ruddy’ complexion, blue eyes, and fair hair. A former soldier in the 103RD Calgary Rifles [a unit of Canada’s Permanent Active Militia, or Territorial Army], Lancaster had been amongst the first Canadians to volunteer in response to the Canadian Prime Minister’s [Sir Robert Borden] call ‘To stand shoulder to shoulder with Britain and the other Dominions in this quarrel’.
Lancaster had eventually been sent to Valcartier Camp near Quebec, which had been in chaos in those early days due to the huge influx of 32, 665 recruits. Whilst there he had been issued with one of the specially made uniforms, a soft cap bearing the soon to become famous bronze Maple Leaf cap badge, a very basic outfit of leather accoutrements, and eventually a Canadian Ross Rifle, a weapon which had later proved to be unpopular in the Canadian Expeditionary force due to its poor performance in the mud and rigorous conditions of trench warfare in Flanders and France.
The 31ST Battalion had eventually been incorporated into the Second Canadian Division, which had been composed of the usual three Brigades of infantry. Unlike the First Division, the Second Division’s three brigades had been organised by area of recruitment, thus giving them a ‘local’ feel. The fourth Brigade had units from Ontario, the 5TH from Quebec, and the 6TH from Western Canada.
The Division had arrived in Britain during May 1915. Based at Shorncliffe Camp near Folkestone, the formation had been inspected by King George the Fifth on the second of September 1915; two weeks later the Division had embarked for France. The Division had eventually been concentrated near Hazebrouk, in Flanders, shortly after their arrival the division, with the First Canadian Division, had formed the Canadian Corps and had moved to the dreaded Ypres Sector, where it had remained until the summer of 1916.
The Second Division had subsequently received its ‘baptism of fire’ at St Eloi during April 1916, when the formation had taken part in a battle, which had revolved around a series of mine craters astride the Ypres to Lille road. During two days of unbridled bloodshed [4-6 April] the Division had suffered some 1,337 casualties.
By early May the men of a severely weakened Canadian Second Division [during the Vimy Ridge operations the Division had suffered over 2,000 casualties] had fought their way over Vimy Ridge into the vast Douai Plain beyond, where the Division, with 1ST Canadian, had been involved in the capture of the village of Fresnoy. Here the formation had been given the task of capturing a network of trenches near to the village. The two divisions had each used a brigade for the attack, the First [from First Division] and the 6TH from Second Division. The attack had been launched at 3-45 am on Thursday the third of May. Of 6TH Brigade’s assault, the ‘Official History’ says;
‘The 6TH Brigade [Brigadier General H.D.B. Ketchen], assaulting on a frontage of 900 yards, had a less straight forward task, as it was to form a strong left flank protection acing north east. With this object in view, it was to capture the network of trenches at the junction of the old Arleux Loop, with the main Oppy—Mericourt Line. To add to their difficulties, the assaulting battalions were enfiladed at the start by well-directed fire from German batteries near Avion, a feature of the German defensive barrage scheme. The resulting confusion was increased by the fact that the German wire had not been so well cut in this sector and, owing to the consequent delay, touch with the creeping barrage was lost’…[2]
Despite these handicaps, on the right of the attack the 27TH [City of Winnipeg] Battalion had succeeded in capturing four hundred yards of the enemy’s front trench after crossing 500 yards of machine gun swept ground and a ‘sharp fight at close quarters’ Soon after sunrise they had reached their final objective, the support trench two hundred yards further on, where the battalion had again come under heavy fire which had put a stop to any further movement forward [for his actions and magnificent courage shown during this encounter Lieutenant R.G. Combe had eventually been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross].
On the left of the assault had been Lancaster’s 31ST Battalion…’The problem that faced the 31ST Battalion on the left, was further complicated by the presence about three hundred yards ahead, half way to the German front line, of a recently dug trench, unoccupied but protected by almost intact wire. On reaching this obstacle its advancing lines were swept by enfilade fire from the trench junction on its northern flank, and the wire prevented change of direction to face it. As a result, the attack split up: some groups followed the new German trench northwards, which led them into the old Arleux Loop trench, where machine gun fire from the trench junction caused heavy losses and stopped further movement; others reached the German front trench, but were so isolated that they were unable to make it good’…
The survivors of the 31ST Battalion had been relieved the following day by the 29TH Battalion, the men retiring to support positions which they had manned until the morning of the eighth. During those four days the unit had been subjected to continuous heavy shellfire, including gas shells. During the night of the 7th/8th of May the shell-shocked officers and men had been relieved by the 30TH Battalion. Even the march to the rear had been fraught with danger, the Battalion’s War Diary records;
‘The march back was a trying one as it was necessary to pass through a very heavy barrage of gas shells’…
Shortly after their ordeal the remnants of the 31ST Battalion, which had gone into action with a strength of 23 officers and 568 men, had been paraded to ‘read the roll’, the ritual of all units returning from the front to ascertain who had survived, and who had not. The roll call had revealed that the Battalion had suffered over two hundred and forty casualties between the third and eighth of May. The highest number of these had been incurred by ‘C’ Company, which had had one officer and seven other ranks killed, four officers and forty eight other ranks wounded, in addition, thirty four other ranks, including Charles Lancaster, were missing, most of whom would later be recorded as ‘assumed to be killed in action’. No remains that could be identified as those of Private Lancaster were ever found.
A former member of the congregation of St Martins-On –The-Hill, Charles Lancaster’s name had been included on the Church War Memorial [in 2003 almost indecipherable] that stands near the entrance to the Church. His name can also be found inside on a Roll of Honour located on the north wall. The memorial commemorates the names of sixty two men and two women [nurses Edith Elizabeth Taylor, and Alice Flintoff] who had also been members of the church, or former pupils of the affiliated St Martins Grammar School who had lost their lives on active service during the Great War. The Memorial bears the inscription;
‘To the honoured memory of those who fell in the Great War 1914-18’.
‘My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles, who will now be my rewarder’.
‘So he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side’…
On the seventh of May 1917 the Commanding Officer of the 6TH Canadian Brigade, Brigadier General H.D.B. Ketchen, had issued a Special Brigade Order, which had been transmitted, to every unit of the Canadian Corps.
‘The brilliant operations during the last month, culminating in the capture of Arleux and Fresnoy, seem to give me the opportunity of expressing to all ranks the pride I feel in commanding the Canadian Corps. Since the ninth of April, when the offensive against Vimy Ridge began, till the morning of May 3RD, when Fresnoy was captured and consolidated, it has been one series of successes only obtained by troops whose courage, discipline and initiative stand pre-ominent. Nine villages have passed into our hands. Eight German Divisions have been met and defeated. Over 5000 prisoners have been captured, and booty comprising some 64 guns and howitzers, 106 trench mortars, and 126 machine guns are now the trophies of the Canadians.
The training undergone during the winter has borne its fruit, and this training coupled with the zeal and gallantry which are so conspicuous in all ranks of the Corps, that will continue to gain results as potent and far reaching as those which began with the capture of Vimy Ridge’…
South of the Scarpe, despite early promise, the results of the first day of the offensive for Allenby’s Third Army had not been as favourable as those of First Army to the north of the river. Nonetheless, all the enemy’s front positions had been taken and his third line had been penetrated on a front of nearly three miles. After the success of the first day, progress on the following day had been something of an anti climax. The main thrust was to be south of the Scarpe, with the objective of capturing the remainder of ‘The Brown Line’ [third line], still remaining in enemy hands then to press on to the Green, or fourth line, capturing the important village of Monchy Le Preux en route. The extreme right of 7TH Corps attack facing the daunting obstacle of the Hindenburg Line had met fierce resistance, and even a counter attack, which had forced a withdrawal from the positions, captured the previous day.
Seventh Corps consisting of the British 21ST, 30TH, 56TH, and 14TH Divisions had been in the centre of Third Army’s line of assault, between the villages of Beaurains in the north, and Croisilles in the south. On the extreme right of the Corps had been the 21ST Division, which had been located between Croisilles and the already featured village of Henin-sur-Cojeul. Faced by uncut wire and the elaborate defences of the Hindenburg Line the division had played little part in the initial stages of the offensive except to make anything more than a holding attack, which should have enabled the other divisions on their left [30TH, 56TH, and 14TH] to get forward with less resistance than they might otherwise have experienced.
Amongst the battalions of infantry of 21ST Division had been the 10TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. Composed for the most part of ‘Kitcheners Volunteers’, the unit had been in the front line just to the south east of Henin, when, during the tenth of April they had received orders to make a frontal attack on the Hindenburg Line in conjunction with the First Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment the following day. Despite the knowledge that the impenetrable wire had not been cut sufficiently, and a raging snowstorm, the assault had begun on Wednesday the eleventh of April. The Official History says;
‘The attack, carried out by the 1/Lincolnshire and 10/ Green Howards, completely broke down. Every one of the five lanes discovered in the wire was swept by machine guns firing from low concrete casements, which were almost undamaged by the bombardment’…[6]
Colonel Wylly adds;‘The attack was duly made at 6am, but the troops came upon enemy wire of unusual thickness and which had been in no way damaged by our artillery fire; the attacking battalions were consequently unable to get through and suffered heavy losses’…[2]
The 10TH Yorkshire Regiment [renamed the Green Howards in 1920] had suffered two officers killed, two wounded, and a hundred and twenty non commissioned officers and men killed or wounded in the attack, amongst them had been; 33213 Private Frederick Henry Knowles.
Officially recorded as being born in Scarborough, Fred had been the twenty nine years old son of Dorothy Ethel and James Knowles, a housepainter by trade who had been living in Scarborough at No. 22 Livingstone Road, however, at the time of Fred’s death they had been residents of Vine Street. A meat carver in Mr. Samuel Bailey’s ‘Central Café’, situated at No.8 Newborough before the war, Fred had lived with his wife, Lillian Bell Knowles and their son Raymond Thomas [born in 1912] at No.46 Wykeham Street. A devout Baptist, Knowles had enlisted soon after the outbreak of war at the Headquarters of the Territorial Force 5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment,
which had then been situated in North Street, Scarborough. [7]
Knowles had eventually been sent to the Regimental Depot at Richmond, North Yorkshire for the customary eight weeks of ‘square bashing’ and a further two weeks of weapons training. By September 1914 so many men had rushed to enlist into the Territorials that the War Office had authorised the formation of Second Line Battalions, which had also replace the original First Line Battalions, many of which had already been on active service [The 1ST/5TH Yorkshire Regiment had been training at Newcastle]. As a consequence of this it had been to the Second Line 2ND/5TH Battalion of the Regiment that Knowles had been posted.
The Battalion had been raised for Home Service during September 1914, [Battalion Headquarters had initially been located in the town’s Grand Hotel]. In November the unit had moved to Darlington where the men being accommodated in the local schools, whilst the officers had been housed in the King’s Head Hotel. April 1915 had found the battalion moved into a camp at Benton, near Newcastle, where, during May the unit had been divided into two separate parts, one half had become a Provisional Battalion, while the other, composed of men considered to be in A1 condition, had been formed into a unit intended for active service. Private Knowles had been in the latter, and had been posted with the remainder of the unit to the Northumberland town of Cramlington, where they had been incorporated into the 189TH [2ND/1ST Yorks. And Durham] Brigade of the 63RD[2ND Northumbrian] Division.
During April 1916 all the A1 men had been placed in drafts for service abroad and by the beginning of August Private Knowles had been included in a draft of replacements destined for the 10TH Battalion, which had suffered appalling losses during the opening phase of the Somme Offensive. After six days ‘embarkation leave’ he had said his last farewell to his wife and son, they would never see him again.
Knowles and his fellow replacements had joined the 10TH Battalion on the Tuesday eleventh of September 1916 in the Arras Sector, near the village of Sombrin, where the unit had been ‘resting and refitting’ after suffering heavy casualties during July in the Somme Offensive. This rest period had come to an end shortly afterwards, when the battalion, by this time at full strength since they had first gone into action in the Battle of Loos the previous year, had received orders to proceed southwards to take part in the latter stages of the fighting ‘on the Somme’. The battalion [and the remainder of 62ND Brigade] had moved up into the front line in front of the by then devastated village of Gueudecourt by the afternoon of the fifteenth, where they had relieved a Brigade from 14TH Division.
By this time the Somme battlefield had been a quagmire due to heavy and persistent rain, one can barely imagine the conditions the men had had to endure. The battalion had initially been placed under orders to prepare to take part in an assault on the nearby village of Guedecourt, however, due to continuous shelling the 62ND had been in such an exhausted state that the attack had been handed to other units, the 62ND had been moved back to Fricourt Camp for a rest. The battalion had remained in the Somme Sector until the beginning of October when the unit had been transferred to support trenches in the Vermelles Sector, to the north of Loos, where the men had spent a very cold and miserable Christmas of 1916.
The 21ST Division had returned to the Arras Sector during March 1917. During the last days of the month the 10TH Yorks had moved up to support trenches at Bosleux-au-Mont,
From here the battalion had eventually been sent to assist the 13TH Northumberland Fusiliers with the capture of the village of Croisilles. Patrols from the battalion had entered the village on the third of April and had assisted with its capture.
Late the following day the battalion had been relieved by the 4TH Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment, the 10TH withdrawing to billets at Hamlincourt. The following day the unit had moved to Adinfer, where the men had endured two uncomfortable days of inclement weather virtually without cover. During the evening of the ninth of April the battalion had moved to the village of Boiry Becquerelle where they had relieved their fellow Yorkshiremen of the 9TH Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the front line near Henin.
At about the time that Fred Knowles had been killed Lillian had given birth to a daughter who would eventually be named after her Grandmother, Dorothy Ethel Knowles. The happy occasion had been overshadowed on Tuesday the 24TH of April when Lillian Knowles had received a letter from one of her husband’s comrades stating he had been killed in action on the 11TH of the month. She had naturally hoped there had been some terrible mistake, however, on the third of May she had received official confirmation from the War Office, the news had been featured in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday the fourth;
‘Confirmed - The news of the death in action of Private Frederick Henry Knowles, Yorkshire Regiment, 46, Wykeham Street has now been confirmed. A friend wrote that he had met with his death some days ago. He was 29 years of age, leaves a widow and two young children’…
Frederick Knowles body had never been recovered from the battlefield, neither had his remains been found after the war despite the numerous searches of the battlefield which had been undertaken by the Army and the then Imperial War Graves Commission. His name had eventually been included amongst the 34,734 names of the casualties lost in the Arras Sector between the spring of 1916 and the 7TH of August 1918, for whom there is no known grave, it is located in Bay 5 of the Memorial. Frederick Knowles name is also commemorated on a small grave marker in Scarborough’s Manor Road Cemetery [Section L. Border. B13], which also bears the name of the daughter he had never known, Dorothy Ethel, who had tragically died at the age of four years on the 2ND of January 1921.
After the war Lillian Knowles had continued to live at No.46 Wykeham Street. During the spring of 1925 she had remarried, and had lived at the house with her husband, Harold Humphries, who had fathered five children, Harold, Joan, Gladys, Norman, and Jessie. Tragedy had never been far from Lillian’s shoulder, on the 2ND of May 1932 her daughter Joan had died at the age of nine years. Harold Humphries [born in the North Yorkshire village of Crayke during 1884] had subsequently passed away at the age of seventy-six on the second of November 1960, and their son Ernest had died on the 24TH of September 1971 at the age of 39 years. Having survived two husbands and three children, Lillian Bell Humphries had died at No.46 Wykeham Street on Tuesday the 16TH of October 1973 at the age of eighty-three. She had been laid to rest in Scarborough’s Woodlands Cemetery [Section M, Row 4, Grave 32] on Friday the 19TH of October.
In the wake of the ill fated attack the 10TH Yorkshire’s wounded had hobbled or been stretchered from the front line to the unit’s Regimental Aid Post, which had been situated in a communication trench behind the front. There the men had been very basically administered to by the battalion’s Medical Officer, Lieutenant E.R. Lyth and his volunteer assistants. Armed with nothing more than a knife, bandages, and morphine the overworked M.O. had removed mud and blood caked field dressings where possible and replaced them with more substantial dressings, where needed he had also performed amputations of shattered limbs on an improvised operating table. All the wounded had invariably been given injections of morphine and marked with a cross on the forehead with an indelible pencil, to warn the next medical centre that the casualty had received the drug.
The wounded had then been labelled with a tag in a tunic buttonhole giving details of the wounds and the treatment received, details had also been included from the man’s pay book stating his regimental number, battalion, and Regiment. He was from. The men had eventually been taken by motor ambulances to the nearest Casualty Clearing Station where the Royal Army Medical Corps had taken over their care. The most seriously wounded, especially head and stomach wounds, had been placed into a packed hospital train which had taken them to specialised Base Hospital, either in France or England. A number of the unit’s wounded had been sent to the 16TH General Hospital at Le Treport, a small seaport twenty five kilometres to the north west of Dieppe, where on Sunday the twenty second of April a thirty seven years old veteran of the Battalion had died from the effects of his wounds; 15164 Private John William Inchbald.
Born in Scarborough during 1880, John had been the eldest son of Annie and ‘stone mason’ David W. Inchbald, who had died at the age of 45 years on the 26TH of September 1889. By the turn of the century John had been living with his widowed mother at No.2 Mill Street, Victoria Road, working a short distance away as a labourer for mineral water manufacturers, Messrs. Foster and Coverdale, whose works had been situated at No.8a Gladstone lane. Also a part time soldier in the Second Volunteer Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, which had been based in the old ‘Temperance Hall’ in Scarborough’s North Street [for many years the Y.M.C.A., in 2003 the building has been demolished], Inchbald had been serving with the battalion during 1900 when the unit had formed an ‘Active Service Company’ for service in South Africa.
Amongst the ranks of the one hundred and three man strong Volunteer Company, which had arrived at the Cape during April of that year to join up with the Regiment’s regular First Battalion to take their places in the costly and humiliating [to the British] Boer War, Inchbald had remained in South Africa until 1902, and for his services the old soldier had been awarded the King’s, and Queen’s, [South African] Campaign Medals.
At the outbreak of the ‘Great War’ the thirty four years old John Inchbald had been the husband of Gertrude Eleanor, and father of two daughters, [his eldest daughter, Gertrude Eleanor had died on the 24TH of August 1910 at the age of four years five months, Doris, his youngest, had died on the sixth of December 1914 aged one day] Gladys and Lillian, the family living at No.30 Brook Street.
By this time Inchbald had worked his way up to foreman at Foster and Coverdale, however, during January 1915 he had left the company to join the ranks of over a million and a quarter British males between the ages of nineteen and thirty who had, by this time, enlisted for ‘three years service or the duration of the war’ in Kitchener’s ‘New Armies’. He had eventually been sent to the over stretched Depot of the Yorkshire Regiment at Richmond, North Yorkshire, where he had undergone the mandatory eight weeks of ‘square bashing’ and two weeks of weapon training [with broom handles] before being posted to the recently formed 10TH Battalion.
Formed during September 1914 the battalion had still been in a state of chaos by the time that Inchbald had joined the unit. Stationed with the remainder of 21ST Division in a rudimentary camp at Halton Park, in Hertfordshire, there had been no uniforms, scant food, and most importantly for infantrymen, no weapons, a fact humorously noted in the battalions records; ‘Can one feel like a soldier with a wooden toy to carry about with you. Knowing that before parade it had already poked the fire, cleared the kitchen sink, beaten the dog, or proved of domestic utility in other ways’…
Despite the shortcomings training had gone ahead, by August 1915 all the men had been kitted out with uniforms and weapons and had been considered fit enough to move to Witley, near Aldershot, where the unit had remained until the ninth of September when they had marched the few miles to Milford where the men had boarded trains that had taken them to Folkestone where they had embarked in transports that had taken them to France, arriving at Boulogne during the afternoon of the following day.
The battalion had eventually gone into action for the first time with the 21ST Division during the Battle of Loos on Sunday the 26TH of September in a poorly planned and prepared attack on strongly held German positions near the Bois Hugo. The assault by the barely trained formation had been a fiasco and had cost the division dearly. During the attack the 10TH Yorkshire’s had lost twelve officers and some 300 other ranks, over thirty per cent of the Battalion.
Not surprisingly, shortly after their appalling ‘baptism of fire’ the 10TH Yorks had been withdrawn from the Loos Sector and had spent the remainder of 1915 in the Ypres Sector, where, once the unit had again been brought up to strength, they had manned a section of the line in the dreaded Eppinette Salient, which they had endured until March 1916, when the by then battle hardened battalion had been transferred to the Somme Sector to take their place in the forthcoming Offensive.
On the opening day of the Offensive [July 1ST] the Battalion had been in divisional reserve in front of a wood to the south of Becourt Wood, in a position known as ‘Queen’s Redoubt. However, ‘B’Company had been detailed to follow up the 4TH Middlesex Regiment of the right brigade and ‘mop up’ the first objective just north of the village of Fricourt.
The company had duly moved to the front just before ‘Zero Hour’ [7-30am] on that terrible Saturday. By the time that the unit had prepared to go over the top the Germans had poured a murderous hail of machine gun fire into No Man’s Land, the men of the company, had quite rightly, been reluctant to climb over their parapet, whereupon the company’s commander, Boer War veteran, Temporary Major Stewart Walter Loudoun-Shand, had leapt over the top where he had stood in full view of the enemy to help his men over the top; ‘and encouraged them in every way until he fell mortally wounded’... [8]
The remaining three companies had gone over the top later in the morning to reinforce a battalion of the Durham Light Infantry in Crucifix Trench. Again the Yorks had been met by heavy machine gun fire, nonetheless, the unit had pushed onwards to their objective, which they had reached, reportedly with few casualties. For the remainder of the day the battalion had consolidated their newly won positions.
The following day the battalion had been ordered to seize an enemy strongpoint known as ‘The Poodles’. The position had been attacked by the battalion’s bombers, which Wylly reports ‘had resulted in some sharp bombing encounters, during which the bombers of ‘D’ and part of ‘C’ [Companies] were engaged; but after two hours fighting, the strongpoint was captured and the garrison all killed or wounded’…
During the early hours of Monday the third of July the Battalion, with the Lincolnshire Regiment had launched a successful attack on Shelter Wood, which had resulted in the capture of over a hundred prisoners. By the evening Inchbald’s ‘C’ Company, with ‘D’ had established a line from the right of the Lincoln’s at the corner of Shelter Wood to a point two hundred and fifty yards south where it had joined the neibouring Seventh Division, which had been at the time the most advanced portion of the 21ST Division’s front.
On the fourth of July the 10TH Battalion had been relieved by the 10TH Lancashire Fusiliers and had moved back to billets at Dernancourt, where the men had entrained in heavy rain bound for the village of Ailly-sur-Somme, they had arrived late during the night, the men moving into billets for a well-earned rest.
The battalion had been rested for three days. By the twelfth of July the unit had been in Mametz Wood, where they had relieved the 10TH Battalion of the South Wales Borderers and taken part in the final capture of that by then, notorious place. The following day the Tenth had been subjected to a heavy artillery bombardment during which the Germans had used as filled shells. During the evening of Saturday the fifteenth the unit had been ordered to attack and capture a trench which had ran west of the village of Bazentin le Petit. The four companies had moved to the front at midnight, where ‘C’ Company had come under heavy shellfire.
The attack had begun at 2am on Sunday, thirty minutes later all objectives had been taken, however at this time the Germans had mounted a huge counter attack that had been beaten off, albeit with heavy casualties. During, and after the attack the battalion had lost three officers and thirty men. The battalion had eventually been relieved to move back to Mametz Wood where they had again been bombarded with gas shells. During the early hours of Thursday the twentieth of July the battalion had marched once again to Dernancourt where the exhausted men had entrained for Saleux, from whence they had marched to billets at Molliens Vidame. The following day they had begun their journey by train to the Arras Sector, where they had arrived on Friday the 28TH of July 1916.
Inchbald’s body had eventually been buried after a short service in the nearby Mont Huon Military Cemetery in Plot Three, Row E, [Grave 10B]. Today the Cemetery, located in the Seine-Maritime Department of France, contains the graves of over two thousand Great War casualties, and seven from the Second World War.
In Scarborough John William Inchbald’s name can be located in the town’s Dean Road Cemetery [Section D, Row 6, Grave O/11] on an elaborate gravestone, which incorrectly states that he had been wounded in action at Vimy Ridge. In addition to his name, the monument has inscribed upon it the Regimental Crest of the Yorkshire Regiment, and the names of daughters Gertrude Eleanor and Doris. The stone also carries a dedication that states;
‘In loving memory of my dear husband’.
‘May his reward be as great as his sacrifice’.
During the post war years John’s mother, Annie Inchbald, had lived in Scarborough at No 3 Taylor’s Dwellings, Cooks Row, until her death at the age of 87years on Monday the 8TH of December 1941. She is buried in Dean Road Cemetery with husband David in Section E, Row 6, Grave 13.she had been survived by daughter Emma [married name Jarvis], and sons Frederick, and James Herbert [Bert], who had also served during the war in the 10TH battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. The soldier’s widow, Gertrude Eleanor Inchbald, had lived for many years after the war at No 8 Austin Friars, in Scarborough’s Filey Road, however, according to the burial records held at the Scarborough Council’s Crematorium, she is not buried in any of the town’s Cemeteries.
During Thursday the twelfth of April the surviving members of the 10TH Yorkshire’s had been in the front line near Henin where they had been subjected to a heavy bombardment of German artillery fire, including gas, which had been in retaliation to the attack of the previous day. This hurricane of exploding shells and shrapnel had caused much damage to their positions, in addition, there had been further casualties, including another of Scarborough’s soldier son’s; 235120 Lance Corporal Frank Leslie Royle.
Born in Scarborough during 1896 at No 16 Queen Street, Frank had been the youngest son of Nancie and George Edwin Royle, a Solicitor, entrepreneur, and at the time of his son’s death, His Majesty’s Coroner for the town [1917-1929]. Motherless from the age of four, Frank had been a pupil from this age of Gladstone Road Infants and eventually the Junior School, he had left the institution at the age of thirteen when he had won a scholarship to the town’s Municipal School [the equivalent of today’s Comprehensive School] which had been located in Westwood [in 2003 the school is an annexe of Yorkshire Coast College]. [9]
He had remained at the school until 1913, when he had left to work in the Leeds office of the Clerical and Medical Insurance Company. Royle had eventually enlisted into the army at Scarborough during October 1915 and had eventually been posted, like Private Knowles, to the 2ND/5TH Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, where he had eventually been promoted to Lance Corporal and had become an instructor in signals. Frank had subsequently landed in France during December 1916 where he had been posted as a signaller to the 10TH Battalion, which at this time had been stationed near the village of Marle les Mines, in the Somme Sector of the Western Front.
Royle had initially been reported as wounded and missing, the news had been relayed in the ‘Scarborough Mercury’ of Friday April 27TH 1917;
‘Solicitor’s son missing - The youngest son [Leslie] of Mr. G.E. Royle, solicitor, Queen Street, is reported wounded and missing. He is 21 years of age and is a signaller in a Yorkshire Regiment. Before the war he was engaged in an insurance office [Clerical and Medical] at Leeds. A brother, Claude—a Scarborough solicitor is serving with the [21St] King’s Royal Rifles in France’…
A soldier’s torn and lifeless body had eventually been located some distance the battalion’s positions which had been identified as that of Frank Royle, some days later his father had received the news that he had been dreading, the local newspaper of Friday the fourth had relayed the tidings;
‘Mr G.E. Royle’s son dies of wounds’.
Mr. G.E. Royle, solicitor, has been officially notified from France that his younger son, Lselie Royle, ‘died on the 12TH inst. Of wounds received in action during the recent fighting, and was buried at a small village south of Arras with several of his comrades’.
Mr. Leslie Royle, who was in his 22ND year, enlisted in October 1915 in the Yorks Regt., in which battalion he became a lance corporal and instructor of signalling. In December last he was drafted over to France, and in February was transferred to another battalion. By military regulation he had to surrender his lance corporal’s stripe on going to France’…
[Although the above article states that Royle had lost his stripe when he had gone to France, he is officially recorded as being ranked as a Lance Corporal at the time of his death].
The remains of Frank Royle, and those of a twenty two years old Lancastrian, Private Robert Maden Holden, also from the 10TH Battalion [who had been killed the same day as Royle], had been taken to the nearby village of Boyelles, which lies about eleven kilometres south of Arras, where the two soldiers had unusually been buried together in the Communal Cemetery there. Their grave is now situated in what is known as Boyelles Communal Cemetery Extension, it can be located in Section 1, Row B, [Grave 6].
A former member of the congregation of Queen Street Methodist Chapel, Frank Royle’s name had been amongst the twenty three names of former members of the church which had been included in the Muster Roll which had been read out by former soldier Sydney Foord during a ceremony which had taken place in the new Queen Street Chapel on the eighth of October 1924 to mark the unveiling of the chapel’s recently installed ‘Memorial Organ’, which forms the basis of the chapel’s memorial to it’s fallen, and the one hundred and sixty five men who had survived. Upon it can be found a brass plate that states;
‘In memory of those who fell and in thanksgiving for the return of those who also served in the Great War 1914-1918’.
Apart from the town’s War Memorial, Royle’s name is commemorated on a ‘Roll of Honour’ located n the Junior Hall of Gladstone Road School, and on a gravestone in a lonely and sadly neglected part of Manor Road Cemetery underneath the footbridge leading from Manor Road into the cemetery. The gravestone [Terrace/A/R/37] also bears the names of his Lincolnshire born [Lenton] mother, Nancie, who had died at the age of forty-two years on the 12TH of April 1900, and father George Edwin Royle, who had been born at Boston [Lincolnshire] during 1854.
For many years he had been the proprietor of the Floral Hall on Scarborough’s North Cliff, which in it’s heyday had been described as ‘this beautiful palace of glass profusely decorated with flowers, streamers, and baskets of hanging flowers’. Renowned for the variety shows which had been staged daily throughout those long forgotten summers by Royle’s troupe of ‘Fol-de-Rols’, the 1,500 seat Floral Hall had been a popular place of entertainment in Scarborough until 1987 when it had been demolished, the Alexandra Bowls Centre now stands on the site. George Royle had died peacefully at his home at No.16 Queen Street on Tuesday the 22ND of October 1929 at the age of seventy five years and had been buried in Manor Road Cemetery following an impressive service which had been attended by his family, the town’s Mayor [Alderman Butler], and most of Scarborough’s professional people at St Mary’s Parish Church, during the afternoon of Saturday the twenty sixth.
Frank’s elder brother Claude Randall [born in Scarborough during 1888] had served throughout the war in the 21ST Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps [Yeoman Rifles]. Although wounded during 1917 he had returned to the town to take up his old profession as a solicitor, and after the death of his father had become the Borough Coroner. He had passed away on the 1ST of March 1960 at the age of seventy-two, and is buried in the town’s Woodlands Cemetery with wife Mabel Evelyn [Section L].
Whilst scanning through the pages of Scarborough’s newspapers regarding a totalling unrelated matter I have come across an extraordinary article in the ‘Scarborough Evening News’ of Saturday the 11TH of January 1958 which reports the death on the 28TH of December at Wellington, New Zealand, of an eighty years old George Royle, the founder of Scarborough’s ‘Fol-de Rols’. The article goes on to say;
‘At the beginning of the century he came to Scarborough from Whitby with a pierrot show called ‘The Imps’, which performed on the sands. After Cardow’s Cadets had played one season at the Floral Hall, after it was opened in 1910, the tenancy was taken over by Mr. Royle, and he returned to the theatre after the war’...
[1] Brigadier General E.L. Spears; ‘Prelude to victory’. Jonathan Cape 1939.
[2] Official history of the war, Military Operations France and Belgium, 1917, Volume One.
[3] Cheerful Sacrifice; Leo Cooper. 1990.
[4] The service records of all the men who had served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the Great War are preserved by the National Archives in Ottawa. The War Diaries of all the Canadian units which had served in the war are also preserved in Ottawa and have recently become available to the public on-line, from the National Archives website.
[5] Although this article mentions Wiffen as being the father of three children, only the name of Walter N. Wiffen, born in Scarborough during the March Quarter of 1913, is contain within the General Register Office records held in Scarborough’s Reference Library.
[6] The Green Howards in the Great War 1914-1918; Colonel H.C. Wylly C.B. [Scarborough Reference Library].
[7] Although recorded by ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War’ [Part 24, Yorkshire Regiment] as being born in Scarborough, the Registry Office in Harrogate does not have a record of a child, eventually named Frederick Henry Knowles, who had been born in the town circa 1887. The only local record of a child with this name is held in the Hull Registry Office, which refers to a Frederick Henry Knowles, the son of James [bookseller and stationer] and Julia Augusta Knowles [formerly Handsley] who had been born at ‘Post Office’, Stepney, in the sub district of West Sculcoates, on the first of September 1887.
[8] Loundoun-Shand had eventually been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his actions on the first of July [the first of four to be awarded for acts of gallantry during the day]. The citation for the award had been included in the London Gazette of the 8TH of September 1916, it reads; ‘For most conspicuous bravery. When his company attempted to climb over the parapet to attack the enemy’s trenches they were met by very fierce machine gun fire, which temporarily stopped their progress. Major Loundoun-Shand immediately leapt on the parapet, helped the men over it and encouraged them in every way until he fell mortally wounded. Even then he insisted on being propped up in the trench, and went on encouraging the non commission officers and men until he died’…
[9] At the time of the 1901 Census of Scarborough’s population the Royle family had been living at No.16 Queen Street and had consisted of the widower George E. aged 45 years, solicitor, born Boston, Lincs, Claude R. aged 14years, Dorothy aged 9, Paul L. aged 8years, George E. aged 6years, Frank L aged 5years, and Marjory H. aged 3years. All the children had been born in Scarborough.