"So, what did you do in the war then?"

When reading some of the inane comments posted on discussion forums and elsewhere, it's all too easy to gain the impression that all men who have served as soldiers are to be regarded as heroes, even more so if they were unfortunate enough to die in the course of doing so. This is a fiction, and a dangerous one, too: the Armed Forces contain the full spectrum of society, from the salt of the earth to the scum of the earth, and always have.

With the release of Military Service Records into the public domain the truth is often laid bare. Here follows the career of one soldier. Although the events took place nearly a century ago I won't name him; I'll refer to him simply as Soldier “B.”

In civilian life he was a crane driver at Vickers’ Shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness. However, he decided to become a soldier, and enlisted in the 4th Battalion on November 10th, 1914. He chose not to serve abroad, electing instead to remain in the UK, initially serving with the 2nd/4th Battalion, and later the 41st (Provisional) Battalion.

I suspect that there was something of the recidivist about him, making him temperamentally unsuited to the disciplined life of the Army, as his surviving service papers amply bear testimony: 

BLACKPOOL - 1/3/15

Charge: Overstaying his pass.

 

Punishment: Admonished and forfeited 2 days’ pay.

 

BLACKPOOL - 4/3/15

 

Charge: Reporting sick without good cause.

 

Punishment: Deprived of 2 days’ pay.

 

BLACKPOOL - 4/3/15

Charge: Shouting on parade.

 

Punishment: Confined to Barracks for 3 days.

 

BLACKPOOL - 5/3/15

 

Charge: Disobedience of order i.e. “showing the upper lip.”

 

Punishment: Confined to Barracks for 3 days.

 

BLACKPOOL - 15/3/15

 

Charge: Absent from Defaulters’ Roll Call 6.0 p.m. to 9.0. p.m.

 

Punishment: Four days’ Field Punishment No. 2.

 
 

March seems to have been quite a busy month for him. I’m particularly amused by the reference to “showing the upper lip.” It’s not an expression I’ve come across before, but it’s one I rather like!

He then appears to have been quiescent for a while, but, once again, his name started to figure quite prominently at the Defaulters' Parade:

 

RYE – 7/9/15

 

Charge: Being late for parade.

 

Punishment: Deprived of 1 days’ pay.

 

RYE – 9/9/15

 

Charge: Being late for guard duty (15 minutes).

 

Punishment: Deprived of 2 days’ pay.

 

WINCHELSEA - 14/9/15

Charge: Unshaved on 8.0 a.m. parade.

 

Punishment: Confined to Barracks for 2 days.

 

WINCHELSEA - 21/9/15

 

Charge: Absent from tattoo 21/9/15 until 9.0 p.m. 23/9/15.

 

Punishment: Deprived of 3 days’ pay.

 

WINCHELSEA - 8/10/15

 

Charge: Parading sick without a cause.

 

Punishment: Deprived of 3 days’ pay and Confined to Barracks for 3 days.

 

WINCHELSEA - 28/10/15

 

Charge: Absent without leave from 10.0 p.m. 26/10/15 until 12.0 p.m. on 28/10/15.

 

Punishment: Awarded 168 hours detention.

 

BIRCHINGTON - 23/4/16

 

Charge: Whilst on Active Service improperly dressed on 11.30 a.m. parade (not wearing identity disc).

 

Punishment: Deprived of 2 days’ pay.

 

BIRCHINGTON – 8/5/16.

 

Charge: Whilst on Active Service (i) being unshaved on 9.0 a.m. parade, (ii) having a dirty rifle.

 

Punishment: Confined to Barracks for 4 days.

 

Co-incidentally, this incident when he was not wearing his identity disc was reported by Sergeant John Longmire, about whom I have posted previously on this blog.

In December, 1916, Soldier "B" was posted to the 4th (Reserve) Battalion and was soon in trouble again:

 

FORMBY – 4/1/17

 

Charge: Irregular conduct on parade.

 

Punishment: Confined to Barracks for 5 days.

 

Finally, on January 29th, 1917, he was posted to the British Expeditionary Force, spending about 5 weeks at the notorious training camp at Etaples before joining the 1st/4th Battalion on March 9th, 1917. Given the reputation of the place – and the men that staffed it – I very much doubt if he dared to turn up late for parade or ‘showed the upper lip.’

In France, he had quite an eventful time too. He was hospitalised once with Trench Fever (26/5/17) and wounded three times; 16/7/17 (Gunshot wound to right wrist and finger received near St. Julien); 31/7/17 (Gunshot wound to shoulder received at Wieltje on the opening day of the Third Battle of Ypres); 20/11/17 (Shrapnel wound to left thigh received at Guillemont Farm, near Epehy during the Battle of Cambrai).

After being wounded for a third time the Army must have thought he was due for a rest and he was granted home leave from January 18th, 1918, until February 1st, 1918. He managed to overstay his furlough;

FIELD – 2/2/18

 

Charge: When on Active Service overstaying his pass by a day from 2/2/18 to 3/2/18.

 

Punishment: Confined to Barracks for 3 days.

 

A couple of months later he found himself a prisoner again, except this time it was as a temporary guest of the Kaiser rather than the King. He was captured at Givenchy on April 9th, and held at Mons until the Armistice. Rather surprisingly he remained in the Territorial Army after the war and eventually got promoted to Corporal.


 

So, ultimately it would appear that Soldier “B” made good and served his country admirably. He wasn’t really a bad lad, simply 'a bit of a handful' - what the Australians term a “larrikin” - and the items listed weren’t really crimes, being more misdemeanours, the sort of things he would probably have laughed about years later. True? Possibly, but there’s one crime on his Conduct Sheet which I haven’t yet listed. It was altogether more serious, and a direct consequence of his general lack of regard for authority and his irresponsible behaviour. It occurred at Birchington on May 30th, 1916;

2029, Drummer Boy George Lovell was 16. If you care to look, you’ll find a photograph of his headstone in one of my earlier posts. For causing his death, Soldier "B" got 6 months in a military prison and, despite the brutal regime in such places, he didn’t seem to learn a great deal from it, as witnessed by his subsequent continued appearances at Defaulters’ Parades. Not that much of a hero, to my mind.

I wonder if he ever got asked what he'd done in the war - and what reply he gave?

Temporary Gentlemen

The old saying goes, 'in every soldier's knapsack is a Field Marshall's baton.' A case in point was Sir William Robertson, Bt., or "Wullie" as he was known. He commenced his career as a lowly trooper in the 16th (The Queen's) Lancers, distressing his mother in the process, who despaired at him having 'gone for a soldier.' However, his example was the exception rather than the rule, and inherent class prejudice (and often the need for a private income to maintain the lifestyle), generally militated against men from the ranks joining the officer elite.

The First World War did a lot to tumble these barriers. It was all very well having a huge army, but that body required officers, and the Public Schools simply could not provide enough of them, such was the rate of attrition. It was only a matter of time before the stuffier elements of the Military Establishment bowed to the inevitable and nodded approval to the routine commissioning of men from the ranks.

Three such individuals were Arthur Rigg and Harry Robinson, from Dalton-in-Furness, and Alfred Burns, from Ulverston. Arthur and Harry both enlisted in the 4th Battalion on the outbreak of war, whereas Alfred was already a serving Territorial, having enlisted in April, 1914. Alfred was grammar-school educated and I suspect that Arthur and Harry were too.

Ian Lewis has provided this lovely photograph including Arthur and Harry, presumably taken soon after they had enlisted and been issued with their uniforms.

(l to r) Pte. Tom Corkhill; 2380, Pte. Arthur Rigg; Pte. "Bob"; 2393, Pte. Harry (Hal) Robinson.

As far as I can tell, Tom Corkhill never served abroad, or if he did, it wasn't with any battalion of the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment). Judging from the close sequence of Service Numbers, "Bob" may be 2377, Private Robert Henderson, but I'll need to check that with Ian to see if my identification is correct. A job for the future!

Arthur and Harry both landed in France with the 4th Battalion on May 3rd, 1915, Arthur by then already a sergeant, Harry still a private. By the time of the Territorial renumbering exercise in Februray, 1917, Arthur was a Company Sergeant Major and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant (Temporary) soon afterwards. Meanwhile, Harry had been transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, initially as 22452, Private Harry Robinson, and then later as Second Lieutenant Harry Robinson (I've never consulted his Service Records but I suspect he served in the 164th Company of the Machine Gun Corps).

Second Lieutenant Arthur Rigg.

Alfred Burns followed a slightly different Army career path. His Medal Index Card only quotes his 6-figure Territorial Service Number, indicating that he never went abroad until after February, 1917. He was then subsequently commissioned into the Labour Corps as a Second Lieutenant. His late posting to the British Expeditionary Force and his transfer to the Labour Corps may hint at a lower medical grading, although he didn't qualify for the Territorial Force War Medal so he obviously hadn't signed the Imperial Service Obligation, agreeing to serve overseas at the time when it was still voluntary for Territorial soldiers.

Private (later Second Lieutenant) Alfred Burns.

I sometimes wonder about the impact of such promotions on both the men themselves and also the men they served with. It's not something I'm knowledgeable about but I suspect that the general rule would not be to commission a man in the battalion he was serving in as it could have made life somewhat awkward, especially in a Territorial battalion where a lot of the men would have known and worked alongside each other as equals in civilian life. I also wonder how they overcame some of the social barriers when mixing with other officers who had originated from a more privileged background. No doubt there was a degree of latent snobbery in some quarters concerning these 'temporary gentlemen' but, generally speaking, they probably would have been acknowledged as being men of merit whose experience was to be learned from; they had, after all, risen to their position by virtue of ability rather than patronage.

Happily, all three of these 'temporary gentlemen' survived the war.

Not worthy

Civic war memorials don't tend to bear the names of executed men. When they were being commissioned the disgrace of such individuals was something to be forgotten about rather than celebrated, the prevailing opinion being that the inclusion of their names would sully the memory of those who had died honourably in the service of King and Country.

Society has moved on and, de jure, the men executed for purely 'military' crimes have now been granted a posthumous pardon, being regarded as much victims of war as any of the others who died. Occasionally there have been attempts to 'update' local war memorials, although, by and large, the clamouring has been resisted by the councils or public bodies responsible for their upkeep.

One man who is not commemorated on any war memorial in Barrow-in-Furness is 2701, Lance Corporal William John Irvine, of the 1st Battalion. He lived in Sloop Street, one of a series of canyon-like tenements on Barrow Island, cheap and cramped housing, built to supply the demand of the town's burgeoning population in the late nineteenth century. They still stand to-day, although now modernised, of course.

Sloop Street, Barrow-in-Furness c.1902.

Reportedly, he'd joined the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion around August 10th, 1914, and - puzzlingly - he was posted to the 1st Battalion in France on September 12th, only a month later. I say, 'puzzlingly,' because this seems an awfully short time to have sufficiently trained a man for active duty and, assuming the enlistment date to be correct, I suspect that he may have had some prior military service, perhaps as a Territorial, although he was only 19according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.* He was also (speedily) promoted to Lance Corporal, which again suggests a bit more than the average new recruit.

Whatever his background on enlistment, after a month in France he'd had enough of soldiering and, after stealing the property of another soldier, deserted on October 13th, while the 1st Battalion was at Hazebrouck, preparing to move off to the trenches near Meteren. It was a bad day to abscond: by nightfall, nearly forty of the battalion were dead, with many more wounded. Under the circumstances I suspect that he wouldn't have attracted a great deal of sympathy from his fellow soldiers regarding his subsequent fate.

He was eventually arrested but managed to escape from custody. The second time he was apprehended was the last. It was time for the Army to settle it's account with him and they did, near Steenwerck, at dawn on April 20th, 1915.

He was buried in Le Grand Beaumart British Cemetery. Six days later, on April 26th, he was joined by 8136, Private James Kershaw, another deserter from the 1st Battalion.

The graves of Irvine and Kershaw, side-by-side in Le Grand Beaumart British Cemetery.

After the war William Irvine's mother, Jane, supplied her address details to the Imperial War Graves Commission when invited to do so, for inclusion in the cemetery register. Whether she ever submitted his name for inclusion on any of the Barrow-in-Furness memorials I'll never know, although somehow, I doubt it.

Nearly a century on, I think it's probably best left that way.

* I suspect that his age, as given in the CWGC's database, is incorrect, as he is shown on the 1911 Census as being 21, which would make him around 25 when he was shot.

His just desert?

The execution of soldiers for desertion during the First World War is an emotive issue with opinions on either side being both polarised and irreconcilable. Much has been written about the subject, a lot of it sensible and a lot of it nonsense.

When visiting the battlefields of France and Belgium I would usually sign the visitors’ books left in the cemeteries and I would often come across the scrawls left by well-meaning fools drawing attention to the fact there was a “Shot at Dawn” man buried there. It was also a particularly undignified spectacle to see a coach-load of battlefield tourists being specifically directed to these graves, there to gawp and ‘tut-tut’, before being hustled on to the next location on their packed itinerary. It was almost as if the other casualties interred there were entirely co-incidental and of a lesser consequence.

To me, such people seem to miss the point of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery entirely. The central tenet of these places is equality of commemoration, irrespective of rank or deed. The grave of a general is no more carefully tended or marked than that of a private; ditto the graves of those shot by the enemy or by their own side.

I once visited the French military cemetery at Barly, near Arras, there to photograph the grave of a local man, Private William Kerr of the Northumberland Fusiliers, originally from the hamlet of Kirksanton. He wasn’t killed in action nor did he die of wounds; he’d had a heart attack while on a route march on July 18th, 1916. He left a widow and two children. Two days previously, on the 16th, a man of the 1st/4th Battalion had been shot for desertion, possibly the first Territorial soldier to be executed in the war, and he too was buried at Barly, only three graves away. He was 3563, Private John Sloan.

Although his Service Records and Court Martial transcript have survived he is a bit of a mystery. Naturally enough, there were no references to him in the newspapers of the time. His enlistment at Ulverston on June 22nd, 1915, would imply that he was living in that vicinity, although he originated from Northumberland and his next of kin was living in Workington.

It would appear that he may have been illiterate, as he signed both his Attestation Form and the Imperial Service Obligation (to serve overseas) with an ‘X’, and in August a travelling medical board assessed him as having an ‘inferior physique’ and being ‘unfit for any military duty.’ Despite this, in April, 1916, he found himself posted to France to join the 1st/4th Battalion.

He’d only been with the Battalion ‘in the field’ a couple of weeks – and had seen little in the way of front-line service with them – when he absconded from a bombing course on May 18th, as noted in the War Diary.

He wasn't at liberty for very long. Apprehended six days later, he was court-martialled for desertion. There were plenty of witnesses and, no credible excuse being offered in his defence, he was sentenced to death. Commanders all the way up the line to Douglas Haig confirmed the sentence, and on the morning of July 16th he was shot. He was 25. The execution wasn't noted in the War Diary; it simply stated that the Battalion was in training at Barly with a view to the forthcoming offensive, and that the billets were very poor.

Should John Sloan have been executed for his crime? You can decide that for yourself. I do know one thing, though: for every John Sloan there was also a William Kerr, and when 'remembering' one it's all too easy to overlook the other.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

“For you, Tommy, ze war is over!,” was the sort of stereotypical comment that filled the cheap pulp fiction war comics that were popular in my youth. In 1918, for young Lance Corporal Joseph Steele, the opposite was true.

He was an agricultural labourer hailing from Corney, a rural community of scattered houses and farmsteads in West Cumbria. Desperately keen to join up, he’d lied about his age when enlisting in the 4th Battalion in late-November, 1914, claiming he was 18, when in fact he was only 16. Apparently, his mother was furious when she found out, although she must have relented, with nothing more being said, because after training at home with the second-line unit of the 4th Battalion he was posted to France on Christmas Eve, 1915, still only aged 17, and technically too young to serve in an active theatre of war.

The next couple of years were uneventful, with him managing to emerge unscathed from the various actions in which the 1st/4th Battalion participated. Then, on April 9th, 1918, at Givenchy, during the stand made by the 55th (West Lancashire) Division against the German offensive on the River Lys, he was taken prisoner.

He might have expected to be removed to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, or at least to a location well away from the battlefield, in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Convention, to which Imperial Germany was a signatory. If he did, then he was wrong. He, and many others of the West Lancashire men who were captured that day, were instead held just behind the German lines at Salomé, almost within sight of Givenchy, there to be put to battlefield clearance, burial, and carrying duties by their captors.

By means of a post-card delivered through the Red Cross he managed to get word home that he had been captured but, by the time it arrived in early-June, he was already dead, killed by a British shell. His family subsequently learned that he, along with several other prisoners of war, had been confined in the ruins of the church at Salomé, being employed as a stretcher-bearer by the Germans. On April 28th, the British artillery started shelling the area and apparently the German sentries ran out of the church to find cover, leaving Joseph and the other men unguarded; they promptly made a run for it. Joseph, however, had left his helmet behind and went back for it, only for a shell to make a direct hit on the church, killing him outright. Some of the other prisoners, who got back to the British lines safely, reported what had happened him.

Lance Corporal Joseph Steele (photograph courtesy of Mr. Ivor Holden).

He wasn't the only prisoner from the 1st/4th Battalion to be killed by the British shellfire that day. Private Robert Helm of Dalton-in-Furness also became a victim, as did Private Robert Ralston, of Caton, near Lancaster, both also having been captured on April 9th at Givenchy. These two men were possibly not with Joseph when he died, as their graves were located post-war and to-day they are both buried in Plot VIII, Row U, of Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez. Joseph's grave, on the other hand, was never formally identified and he is now commemorated on the Loos Memorial, although I feel that in all likelihood he is buried somewhere in a quiet cemetery marked simply as an "Unknown Soldier."

I wonder how many more British soldiers were killed under such circumstances? Probably quite a few.

Grandad's Army

A few weeks ago I sat and watched an episode of Dad's Army, although I have to admit I don't usually need much of an excuse to do so. It was one of the first series - in black and white - and the storyline centred around an officious inspecting Major's assertion that Lance Corporal Jones was too old to be in uniform.

It prompted memories of a name on a war memorial in St. Mary's Church at Egton-cum-Newland, near Ulverston. It was a name that intrigued me a great deal when I first researched that particular memorial because I didn't recognise the unit listed and it took me a while to identify the man commemorated.

'Private' George Frearson was 60 years old when he died on on March 7th, 1917, at home, peacefully, in his bed. His was a military funeral, attended by fellow members of the Crake Valley Section, and also the Ulverston Section, of the 14th Battalion, Lancashire Volunteer Regiment, a unit of the Volunteer Training Corps affiliated to the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment).

But just who were the 14th (Barrow) Battalion of the Lancashire Volunteer Regiment, and what did they do? Fortunately, for anyone interested, there is an excellent description of the Volunteer Training Corps available on the website of the King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment Museum - http://www.kingsownmuseum.plus.com/ww1-volbnskorlr.htm - and I don't think it will serve much purpose to repeat it here. Suffice to say, the Volunteer Training Corps were the quasi-military forerunners of the Home Guard of WW2, and were employed locally, finding guards for strategic locations and industries. In reality, I think their existence was an excuse to enable men who were too old or unfit to serve in the regular forces to feel that they were still able to play their part - rather like Corporal Jones.

The pedant in me notes that the memorial at Egton-cum-Newland Church is actually wrong, since it gives Private Frearson's regimental details as 2nd (V) Battalion, King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment). In fact his unit didn't receive that title until 1918, when Army Order 208 of that year authorised new alternative titles for the units of the Volunteer Force. At the time of his death, in 1917, it was still the 14th (Barrow) Battalion, Lancashire Volunteer Regiment, as correctly stated in his newspaper obituary.

Unfortunately, I know of no photographs showing men of the Volunteer Battalions of the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), although I'm sure there must be some somewhere. However, the following two photographs come courtesy of a contributor to 'The Great War Forum', and show men of a detachment of the Volunteer Training Corps on parade in Manchester. This particular unit would later be styled the 2nd (Manchester?) Battalion, Lancashire Volunteer Regiment.

The oganisation and activities of the Volunteer Training Corps seems to be an aspect of the 'Home Front' during the Great War about which there is little known or written down. Perhaps it's a subject long overdue for some serious research.

Volunteer Training Corps badge (King's Own Museum).

Mr. Smith goes to war

A few years ago some renovations were being done at a shop in Sevenoaks, Kent. The shop had once previously been a photographic studio belonging to the Essenhigh-Corke family of photographers and artists and, bricked up in an old fireplace, were discovered nearly 500 glass plate negatives, photographs of soldiers of the WW1-era. These precious objects are now in the safe custody of the Kent County Archive.

Among many others in this amazing time-capsule were several photographs of men of the Territorial battalions of the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), who had obviously had their portraits professionally captured when stationed in the district in early-1915, there probably not having been sufficient time or opportunity to do so in their home towns after they had enlisted on the outbreak of war.

Unfortunately, in the main the photographer had only recorded the surnames of his subjects and most cannot now now be definitely identified, although one, of Richard Usher of the 4th Battalion was obviously the portrait supplied by his parents for publication in the 'Barrow Guardian' when his death in August 1916, was announced.

2410, Private (later C.Q.M.S.) Richard Usher.

One of the unidentified images is of a youthful-looking 'Private Smith.' His portrait is perhaps unusual in that it depicts him in full marching kit, holding his rifle.

I know nothing else about him other than he must have been serving in either the 4th or 5th Battalion, and that by deciding to get himself professionally photographed it would suggest that he was a new recruit to the regiment - and proud of the fact.

I have never seen this photograph reproduced in any of the local newspapers in connection with the reporting of a casualty so that is no proof that he survived the war unscathed, but I hope he did.