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.

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.

Seeing double

The many official memorials to the missing maintained by the CWGC bear the names of some servicemen who, in actual fact, have an identified grave. There are several reasons for this. The graves of some men were identified either during or after construction of the memorials in the post-war years and for aesthetic reasons it was (and still is) preferable to leave the carved panels intact rather than trying to erase a name. However, in the days of cross-referencing paper records there were also administrative mix-ups which resulted in men being commemorated twice, once by a headstone on an offical war grave and also by being listed on one of the memorials.

By and large the CWGC have managed to identify most of the names that fall into the latter category and have amended their records accordingly. Their official line is that the place of commemoration of a man (or woman) is that which is listed in their database, searchable online. So, for example, 3805, Private Tom Eccles, of the 1st/4th Battalion, is officially buried in Serre Road Cemetery No. 2 although his name is also visible on the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment) panel on the Thiepval Memorial, his remains having been found after the Thiepval Memorial was unveiled in August, 1932. More on Tom Eccles in a future blog.

One man who has escaped the regular 'housekeeping' trawls of the CWGC database is 2248, Corporal Thomas Long, of the 1st/4th Battalion.

He was an iron ore miner by trade, working at the Hodbarrow Mine near Millom. He'd previously been a Territorial and rejoined their ranks when war broke out. He was severely wounded at Guillemont in August, 1916, and was evacuated to the U.K. to recuperate, returning to France in January, 1917.

Corporal Thomas Long. Not a brilliant photograph but infinitely better than none at all.

A couple of months later, on March 11th, 1917, he was killed in action, sniped while in the trenches near Wieltje. The news of his death was conveyed to his parents by Lieutenant William Ross Pattinson, then commanding 'D' Company:

     “It is with the very deepest sorrow that I have to tell you that your son, 2248, Corpl. T. Long, was killed in action on the 11th March. He did a brave deed, going out by himself early in the morning to watch the enemy. In the evening he did not return, and a search party later found him lying near the trenches, dead. It will be, I know, some comfort in your sorrow to know that he died painlessly and instantly. He was brought in, and will be buried to-morrow, the 13th, where, I cannot exactly tell you, but I will let you know later on.”

     “Your son was a decent lad, well thought of by all his officers, popular with the men, and his death is very keenly regretted by us all. The Company wishes me to convey their sympathy to you, which I do willingly, adding my own. I am line company commander, and appreciated his worth, although no sympathy can in any way save you any of your awful loss. May it be a comfort to you all that he died doing his duty as an Englishman should, with his face towards Germany.”

Contrast this with the letter his brother, 867, Private George Long had to write to their sister:

     “It is with regret that I write to convey the sad news that Thomas was killed yesterday morning (Sunday). I saw him last night on the stretcher; they were carrying him by our place when they came in and asked us the way to the aid post. They told us who it was, and I went out and had a look at him. He will have a decent burial place. I don’t know how you will let poor mother know about it. I have not written to her, so you will have to let her know. The Captain of his Company has letters and everything out of his pockets. I hope you don’t take this news too bad.”

Leaving the jingoistic sentiments of the officer's letter to one side (which, in truth, probably didn't offer much in the way of consolation at all) the fact that Corporal Long's body had been recovered and would be buried is quite clear. In fact, his burial took place at Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery, a place rapidly filling up with the dead of the 55th (West Lancashire) Division.

However, Thomas Long is also commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial - officially!

I suspect the oversight may have occurred due to him being killed right on the cusp of the issue of the new Territorial Numbers, since he is commemorated on the Menin Gate as 200375, Corporal Thomas Long, whereas his commemoration in Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery is as 2248, Corporal Thomas Long. Perhaps the news of his death going back to the Territorial Force County Association and formal notification of his newly-allocated number coming from the Territorial Force Country Association "crossed in the post", so to speak, and after the war, when the records were being compiled, the authorities believed that they were dealing with two different men.

What is puzzling is that his Vlamertinghe database entry gives his next of kin as Rowland and Hannah Long, of Millom, Cumberland; by contrast his Menin Gate database entry gives no next of kin details.

I've never alerted the CWGC to this double commemoration. To me it is simply an interesting curiosity, and it means that "1" should always be subtracted from any official total of war dead.

86% correct isn't too bad, is it?

Since the advent of the online database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the researching of local war memorials has become a common theme among amateur military historians. Some have published part or the whole of their efforts on the Internet (myself included), while others are content to merely compile a 'Roll of Honour' for posterity.

I have always been very cautious about listing a man where I entertain any doubts as to the accuracy of my identification. I always manage to resist the urge to 'fill in the gaps' unless I'm more or less certain that I've got it right. A few, although thankfully not many, are less circumspect and seem to give in to this temptation.

Does it matter? Yes, I think so. If, by researching the names you intend to specifically perpetuate their memory, then if you've got the wrong man you may as well not have bothered in the first place, no matter how well-intentioned the motive.

I'll illustrate this with a couple of memorial photos provided by my friend Ian Lewis. They are from the Dalton-in-Furness Conservative Club. One is the original, compiled immediately post-WW1, the other is a more recent addition.

The original Roll of Honour as displayed in the Conservative Club. It gives names, ranks, and regiments, including battalions.

The new Roll of Honour displayed in the Conserevative Club, complied with information provided by the online Commonwealth War Graves Commission database.

In the original, Private Edgar Hall is noted as 4th Battalion, King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment); in the new Roll of Honour (presumably compiled by one of the Club's members) he is identified as 11868, Private Edgar Hall, 1st Battalion, King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment), killed on October 8th, 1915, and buried in Sucrerie Military Cemetery, Colincamps.

It seems highly plausible, doesn't it? A simple transcription mistake made back in 1919 (or thereabouts) when '4th' was mistakenly written instead of '1st'. Edgar Hall isn't a very common name, when all's said and done, and the only other 'Edgar Hall' recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as serving in the King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment) at the time of his death was a bank clerk from Bolton-Le-Sands, near Carnforth.

Time to consult other sources, say, local newspapers from late-August, 1916:

Pte. EDGAR HALL.

         Official intimation was received on the 18th inst. that Private Edgar Hall, “A” Company, 1/4th Battalion King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment was killed in the recent advance in France. Private Hall was 26 years of age, and the only son of Mr. J. R. Hall, a director of the Carnforth Hematite Iron Company, Ltd. He was educated at Miss Pickford’s School, Carnforth, and the Royal Grammar School, Lancaster, and only went out to the front about two months ago. At the time of his enlisting, he was a clerk in the Manchester and Liverpool District Bank at Dalton-in-Furness where he had been for about ten years, and was held in high esteem by his employer, colleagues, and many other friends by whom his death is lamented. He was the secretary of the Dalton Cricket Club, and also secretary of the Warton Lawn Tennis Club, and a member of the Dalton V.T.C.

I know next-to-nothing about the Edgar Hall of the 1st Battalion who is buried in Sucrerie Military Cemetery. I do know that he wasn't the Edgar Hall who is commemorated on the original Roll of Honour in Dalton-in-Furness Conservative Club. That Edgar Hall was killed at Guillemont on August 8th, 1916, serving in the 1st/4th Battalion.

However, I can happily report that the other six men named have been correctly identified.

"........& 13 others wounded."

War Diaries are, of necessity, brief, and tend only to give the minimum of detail needed to establish a unit’s activities on a particular date. The fate of officers is usually recorded but ‘other ranks’ most often do not merit a mention, except as a tally. To my mind this has the effect of desensitising the reader to the events being described; ordinary men simply become statistics.

The 1st/4th Battalion’s War Diary entry from December 18th, 1915, gives the following detail:

At 11 A.M. 2/Lt Ward while demonstrating to class of beginners use of Grenade Hand No.1 exploded grenade, with result that he was badly wounded, one man killed & 13 others wounded. 2/Lt Ward died in evening at Corbie.

So, we know that the unlucky Second Lieutenant Ward died of his wounds but the other fatality and the thirteen wounded remain anonymous.

The ‘one man killed’ can be identified via various databases as 2452, Private James McQuade, of Barrow-in-Furness, but who were the others, and what became of them?

Fortunately, other sources are available to illuminate the human tragedy behind such scant detail. The following report is transcribed from the ‘Barrow Guardian’ of March 25th, 1916:

DALTON SOLDIER BLINDED.

A KING’S OWN SIGHTLESS BUT CHEERFUL.

RAN WITH EYE IN HIS HAND.

SHRAPNEL GOES THROUGH PRAYER BOOK.

        Sergt. William Kirkby is the first of the King’s Own Royal Lancasters to lose his sight in this terrible conflict. He is now at his home, 13, Cobden-street, Dalton, and when a “Guardian” reporter saw him last Tuesday he was agreeably surprised to find Sergt. Kirkby in a particularly happy frame of mind, and quite cheerful. There was nothing dull or pessimistic about this gallant fellow, who will carry his reminder of the great European war to the end of his days.

        He said he had been in the war zone nine months before the explosion of a bomb on December 18th, which caused such serious injuries that at first his life was despaired of. He remembers being struck in the right eye and on putting his hand to the place the eye dropped into the palm. He ran some hundreds of yards in that state until he fell through exhaustion. He also had a wound in the head, from which the doctors took a piece of shrapnel. He was removed to hospital, and though receiving every skilled attention the sight of the left eye gradually waned and left him sightless.

        On arriving in England he was treated with all care at the Second London Hospital, and is now well on his way to convalescence. He agreed that his recovery was marvellous and spoke in high terms of the treatment he received from the medical staff and sisters in the various hospitals, and also of the Red Cross Nurses. The soldier spoke in eulogistic terms of Captain Barrett, of Millom, and the other officers, non-commissioned officers and men of his battalion.

        His cheerfulness can be exemplified in his remark: “Well, I’m not so bad as thousands of my comrades. I am glad I’m alive. I have every opportunity for getting on in the world. I am going training to the Blind Institute at St. Dunstan’s, Regent’s Park, London, and hope soon to pick up a trade.”

        Mrs. Kirkby, who is delighted to have her husband home again, showed me a piece of shrapnel which had gone through Sergt. Kirkby’s clothing, past 30 rounds of ammunition, pierced through his infantry training book, his prayer book, and map, and lodged in his pocket wallet, going through letters and papers in the wallet, making a hole in the forehead of his brother’s photograph, also through the bust of his father’s photograph.

        Sergt. Kirkby has a brother, Pte. Ben Kirkby, now in France serving in the same regiment.

Sadly, the family was to experience further tragedy four and a half months later when Ben Kirkby was killed at Guillemont.

Maybe one day the other dozen wounded men will be identified................

Still missing......

Territorial service numbers are often very telling about a man's military career. In a future blog I'll explain them more but for now, suffice to say, all Territorial soldiers were renumbered in early-1917, including those who were officially listed as missing in action.

The norm was to record a man as missing in action for a period of twelve months from the date he was last seen and then, if no information concerning him had been subsequently received, he was officially declared to be dead. This process can be seen at work in casualties from 1916, many of whom are listed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission as having new (1917) service numbers, when, in fact, they had been dead a long time before the new numbers were issued.

Less common are the instances of men who had been missing since 1915 who also got renumbered. At this distance I can only ascribe this to administrative oversight by the County Associations which administered the Territorial records, although it is just possible that faint hopes were still being entertained of the mens' safety, even as much as two years after they had last been seen alive.

A case in point is that of Private Thomas Patrick Blake of the 1st/4th Battalion. Originally from Kilglass in County Sligo, he had worked for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland before moving to Dalton-in-Furness in the 1890's, there to take up employment in the local iron ore mines at Roanhead. He had joined the Territorials before 1908 when they were still the Volunteers and was the company cook for the Dalton-in-Furness detachment.

Although quite old by the time the war started (he was in his early 40's), he volunteered for service abroad and landed in France with the battalion on 3rd May, 1915. Six weeks later he was dead, killed in the abortive assault by the 51st (Highland) Division on the German lines near Festubert on June 15th. However, no-one actually saw him die and so, when the roll was taken following the battle, he was listed as one of the missing - and there were lots of names besides his.

To-day, he is commemorated on the Le Touret Memorial, along with nearly all of his comrades from the 1st/4th Battalion who died on that day and whose remains almost certainly still lie in the quiet fields to the west of Rue d'Ouvert. However, in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's records his service number is given as 200016, a number allocated in 1917, rather than his original service number, 703.

Co-incidentally, 200016 indicates that at the time of the formation of the Territorial Force from the old Volunteers he was 16th in seniority among the enlisted men in the 4th Battalion, an indication of just how long he had been serving.