William Eric Lunt a soldier of the Great War

William Eric Lunt, was born here in 1895, and died of wounds in the 36th Casualty Clearing Station at the Somme on October 14th 1916.

This was the story I had decided to tell, but sometimes the stories just tumble out, crossing time and connecting the Chorlton of the early 20th century with that rural township I have come to know so well.

And this is what has happened today.  The Lunt family lived in Chorlton and made their living from farming for all of the 19th century.  In 1845 they rented two acres of land off Moss Lane* from the Egerton estate and were market gardeners growing a variety of food for the Manchester markets.

His smallholding was mostly orchard, stretching back from Moss Lane to Rough Leach Gutter and was a smallish amount of land, and like many of our market gardeners Lunt may also have had other jobs as well. And we know that he paid 4s. 7d a week in rent and in that cottage he and his wife brought up six children.



Above; The Lunt home and land on field numbered 18.

Not only this but we can follow him through his activities in the local Methodist church and his participation in our first brass band which started up sometime in the 1820s.

And the Lunt family perfectly reflect the changing nature of Chorlton.  As the 19th century came to a close more and more of the agricultural land was given over to housing. Perhaps the Lunt’s saw it coming and while they may have retained their land they had by 1901 opened a shop at number 60 Sandy Lane selling fruit and young William had chosen to work as a warehouseman apprentice.

Which brings me to where I had intended to start.  William was just 19 when he joined up on September 5th 1914; just one month after the war had broken out.  He was a fit young man weighing 129 lbs and was 5’ 11 inches.  His army records describe his complexion as sallow, his eyes brown and his hair dark, and that at present is all we know of his physical appearance.

In fact that is about all we have, for though there are eighteen military documents, as well his birth certificate and two census returns, none of them shed any light on who he really was, his likes and dislikes, or whether he was serious, humorous or like most of us a bit of both.

He was to become part of that new Kitchener’s army of young idealistic volunteers many of who were to die at the battle of the Somme.  I wish there was more.  I know he had joined up at Ardwick, was assigned to the 8th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and remained in Britain until the summer of 1916 when he embarked at Folkestone landing on July 27 at Boulogne.

It should be possible to piece together the next few months from the official history of the regiment and from the war diary the unit filled in for every day of the conflict.  But at present perhaps all I can say is that he was caught up in the Battle of the Somme, was wounded on October 12th and died two days later of his wounds.
“The 36th Casualty Clearing Station was at Heilly from April 1916. It was joined in May by the 38th, and in July by the 2/2nd London, but these hospitals had all moved on by early June 1917. .......  There are now 2,890 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. Only 12 of the burials are unidentified and special memorials are erected to 21 casualties whose graves in the cemetery could not be exactly located. The cemetery also contains 83 German graves. The burials in this cemetery were carried out under extreme pressure and many of the graves are either too close together to be marked individually, or they contain multiple burials. Some headstones carry as many as three sets of casualty details, and in these cases, regimental badges have had to be omitted. Instead, these badges, 117 in all, have been carved on a cloister wall on the north side of the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.  

Mericourt-l'Abbe is a village approximately 19 kilometres north-east of Amiens and 10 kilometres south-west of Albert. Heilly Station Cemetery is about 2 kilometres south-west of Mericourt-l'Abbe, on the south side of the road to Corbie.”**

It is not much of a record for what had been a young life with promise and a future.  And I suppose that is the point.  After almost a century the grief of the death of so many has faded but not I think the sadness that so little is left of who this young man was.

*Sandy Lane

**http://ww1cemeteries.com/ww1frenchcemeteries/heillystation.htm

Pictures; Allied Victory Medal, awarded to servicemen and women who had served between August 1914 and November 1918,detail from the tithe map of 1845 showing the cottage and land of the Lunt’s courtesy of Philip Lloyd, and the Heilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt-l@ Abbe Somme, courtesy of WW1 Cemetries.com http://ww1cemeteries.com/index.htm

The search that connects Chorlton with a British War Cemetery in the Netherlands

There is just an outside chance that there is someone who remembers Mr. and Mrs. Chetham who lived at Grindley Avenue in Chorlton.

The grave of Arthur Chetham, 2021, Nederweert

They were there from at least 1939 and possibly earlier, and it will be from there that their son Arthur went off war and Joyce, their daughter went off to be married.

She married Arthur Sutton in 1945, and may have stayed local.

I am not sure when her brother enlisted, or his early career in the army, but in 1944 he was in the 8th Battalion of the Royal Scots which was raised on August 2nd 1939.  This fits, because he was already away from the family home at the beginning of  September of that year. 

His battalion stayed in the UK until June 1944 when it landed in Normandy  and fought at the Battle for Caen in Operation Epsom,  and later at the Second Battle of the Odon and Operation Bluecoat. 

The battalion then fought in the North West Europe Campaign, from Paris to the Rhine, until the end of the war.

They entered Belgium in September, crossed the Rhine in March 1945, and advanced to Hamburg by the end of the war.*

Arthur was killed on October 31st 1944, between the villages of Asten, Liessel and Neerkant, during the advance through the Netherlands and is buried in the British War Cemetery at Nederweert.

I doubt I would ever have come across his story were it not from the appeal posted by Jürgen Beekers on social media asking for help to track down information on this young man who is one of 363 Commonwealth servicemen who buried in the Nederweert war cemetery.

Candles lit on Christmas Eve, 2020

Many of whom have been adopted by residents in the region around the municipality of Nederweert, which is co-ordinated by The Adoption Graves Foundation of the Nederweert War Cemetery, and involves visiting an adopted grave several times a year, which might be on the birthday of the dead serviceman and annually on Remembrance Day and Christmas Eve when candles are lit on the graves.

In the case of Private Chetham, there was little known, other than that he was the son of Arthur James Chetham and Edith Emily Chetham of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Jürgen’s appeal was successful and while we still do not know too much about Arthur, there is a better understanding of his family, and in the course of the next week we should know exactly when he was born, which will assist in commemorating his birthday in a simple ceremony at his grave.

And that brings me back to the hope that someone may know something of the family, and perhaps have a picture of our young soldier.

The position of Private Chetham's grave marked with a  red circle, 2021

Tantalisingly, there are a number of family historians who have included Arthur’s parents on their family trees deposited on the genealogical platform, Ancestry.

It may just be possible that these family historians have links to others who knew the Chetham’s.

And while I await developments I will track down a reference to Arthur in the Manchester Evening News, and research the regimental diaries of the 8th Battalion for October 1944.

Unit of the 8th Battalion, October 27th, 1944 outside Tilburg

By chance I came across a photograph of the 8th Royal Scots pausing during the attack on Tilburg, on October 27th.  Tilburg is roughly 66 km north of Nederweert.  

Today the journey south to where Private Arthur Chetham died takes just about 48 minutes by car and one and a half hours by train.

So far it is the closest I have got to him, but at least, a little of the story of a young man from Chorlton-cum-Hardy who was killed 77 years ago has come out of the shadows, and will help those in Nederweert, honour his memory.

Location; Nederweert

Pictures; Infantry and carriers of 8th Royal Scots pause during the attack on Tilburg in the Netherlands, October 27th, 1944, Sergeant Laing, No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Imperial War Museum, Nederweert War Cemetery , 2020-2021, courtesy of The Adoption Graves Foundation of the Nederweert War Cemetery, and the collection of Jürgen Beekers

*Royal Scots, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Scots

** The Adoption Graves Foundation of the Nederweert War Cemetery https://adoptiongravesnederweert.com  

Six years 142 days with the Colours ........... stories from my granddad's war

I am looking at one of the only family documents to have come down to us from the Great War.  It is my grandfather’s discharge documents.

He served from 1916 to 1922, which makes him unusual in the family.  The rest including my great grandfather, two great uncles and two uncles all left the army when the war ended, but he stayed on.
I have no reason of knowing why he signed on for four more years.  It is perfectly possible that army life suited him.  He had after all grown up in institutions from the age of four, spending his teens on a training ship for wayward boys and then as a cabin boy.  Or perhaps he had already met the German girl he was to marry in 1920 and so had a motive for staying in Germany.

Either way it is a most powerful link with a period in his life of which I knew nothing and with customary efficiency almost all you might have wanted to know about him is here on two sides of an A5 piece of paper.  Service number, date of enlistment and discharge, the regiments he was assigned to, along with physical characteristics and military records, including medals and years of combat service.  It is all here.

There must be many of these tucked away in old books, photograph albums or filing cabinets, long forgotten now that all those who fought have passed on.  It is of course a wonderful piece of personal family history but it is also an entry point into the military world of the Great War.

So amongst all the detail is the record that he had been awarded three blue chevrons.  These indicated the number of years a soldier had served abroad from 1915 and were worn on the right tunic sleeve.

Equally revealing is that he belonged to the Labour Corps. Formed in January 1917, it was the direct successor of the units which had been established to perform all the labouring tasks needed by the army.  “They were given the name of Pioneers and differed from normal infantry in that they would be composed of a mixture of men who were experienced with picks and shovels (i.e. miners, road men, etc) and some who had skilled trades (smiths, carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, masons, tinsmiths, engine drivers and fitters). A Pioneer battalion would also carry a range of technical stores that infantry would not. This type of battalion came into being with an Army Order in December 1914. In early 1916, a number of infantry battalions composed of men who were medically graded unfit for the fighting were formed for labouring work. They had only 2 officers per battalion. Twelve such battalions existed in June 1916.

The Labour Corps grew to some 389,900 men (more than 10% of the total size of the Army) by the Armistice. Of this total, around 175,000 were working in the United Kingdom and the rest in the theatres of war. The Corps was manned by officers and other ranks who had been medically rated below the "A1" condition needed for front line service. Many were returned wounded. Labour Corps units were often deployed for work within range of the enemy guns, sometimes for lengthy periods. In April 1917, a number of infantry battalions were transferred to the Corps.”*

So there you have it.  It is a fascinating document which puts my grandfather into the big picture, but it has still one last clue to that world or at least to the new world after 1918, and it is contained at the end.  He was “discharged in consequence of Para 392(XXV) KR (Kings Army Regulations 1912) His services being no longer required after having served Six Years 142 days with the Colours.”

We were at peace and he was just little later than the rest of our family to join that peace.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Chris Baker The Long, Long Trail http://www.1914-1918.net/labour.htm

Looking for links between Chorlton and a wartime airman

Uden War Cemetery

Anyone who has got involved in family history will know both the excitement at making a new discovery about a relative and the frustrations when an individual just stubbornly refuses to come out of the shadows.

And it is no different when you are trying to uncover a complete stranger at the request of a fellow historian.  

It is something I have done before and always takes you on unexpected journeys.*

The enquiry came from a Dutch researcher looking for relatives in Chorlton of a young airman who had been killed in action and was buried in a local war cemetery.

I had his name, age and the names of his parents but all three remained elusive and even after revisiting the usual genealogical haunts all I could come up with was a reference to his birth in Prestwich.

Now the usual practice at this point is to go away and try again later often from a totally different angle.

And this was how the breakthrough came about because there in the Commonwealth graves site was the young man, including his service number and the day he died.  

He had been air gunner and died on June 23^rd 1943.

Now on that particular day the RAF had mounted an attack on a German rocket factory. The records provided details of the aircraft, the squadron and something of the outcome.  This was Operation Bellicose

Armed with this information it will be possible to track the operational records at the National Archive and identify the plane and the crew that our young RAF sergeant was part of.

But in a sense this was not the brief but once you start crawling over peoples’ lives you get drawn in.

And so the search revealed that his father had been born in Manchester in 1885, and that in 1911 aged 26 he was a ships steward, who was at home with his widowed mother in George Leigh Street off Great Ancoats Street.

A decade earlier the family had been running the Trafford Arms on the corner of Chadderton Street and Thompson Street.  It is an area I know well but the blitz and redevelopment have long since cleared most of what was once a densely packed area of shops houses, and factories on the edge of Oldham Road Goods Station.

George Leigh Stret, 1900

It is just a few minutes’ walk away from George Leigh Street and I guess with the death of his father his mother had moved to George Leigh Street where she opened a provisions shop which was enough of a going concern for her to employ a servant but didn’t warrant a mention of the directories of the period.

All of which is a little bit away from Sergeant Vincent Sugden who the story began with and the search for living relatives here in Chorlton.

Now Mr Sugden’s parents were married in 1914 and Vincent in 1921, but as yet there seems to be no connection with here.  His father may have died in 1945, followed by his wife a year, but equally there is a reference to someone who could have been his father dying eight years earlier in north Manchester.

There remains at present one possible line of enquiry and that involves a relative who posted details of the Sugden’s on one of the genealogical platforms.  It is a long shot because she has not been active on the site for a year, but I travel in hope.

And even if there are no links between Mr Sugden and Chorlton, well at least a little bit of his story had come back out of the shadows.

It may even be that my Dutch colleague is keen to follow my friend Rudd who set me off investigating another young airman who also died in action over Holland.  He was Sergeant George Blatherwick and like Vincent died when his plane was shot down a year earlier in the summer of 1942.

Rudd has been campaigning for a civic memorial to all those on both sides who died around the tiny Dutch village of Geffen.

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/George%20Blatherwick

Aircrew of 467 Squadron RAAF, August 1944

**Operation Bellicose targeted the Nazi Germany Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen and the La Spezia, Inaval base in Italy and was the first use of shuttle bombing in World War II.

Shuttle bombing involved bombers flying from their home base to bomb a first target and continue to a different location where they are refuelled and rearmed. 

The aircraft then bombed a second target on the return leg to their home base.

Operation Bellicose was the  first shuttle bombing mission. On the night of 20/21 June the RAF bombers departed from their bases in the United Kingdom and bombed Friedrichshafen, landing in Algeria where they refuelled and rearmed. 

On the return leg they bombed the Italian naval base at La Spezia

Pictures; Uden War Cemetery, where Sergeant Vincent Sugden is buried, Commonwealth Graves Commission, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2082100/UDEN%20WAR%  aircrew and ground staff from No. 467 Squadron RAAF with one of the Squadron's Lancaster bombers at RAF Station Waddington after the squadron had returned from a daylight attack on enemy airfields in Holland, August 14^th, 1944, a year after the squadron attacked Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen and the La Spezia, Italy, naval base, Wikipedia Commons and George Leigh Street, 1900, H Entwhistle, m11229, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Those from Chorlton who fought in the Great War

I have been thinking about the Great War and in particular the role of my own family in that conflict.

We sent six off to fight for King and Country.  There were two uncles, my grandfather, great grandfather and two great uncles, and because my grandmother was German we had relatives who joined the armies of the Kaiser.

But today I want to return to the impact the war had on our township here in Chorlton.  Now it is something I have written about in the past* when purely by accident I came across the work of the voluntary Red Cross Hospitals on Edge Lane and Manchester Road.

The stories cover only the first two years of the war but reveal the commitment of the community to the care of the wounded, and also reveal that darker side where patriotism tumbles over into hostility and deliberate misunderstanding.



I can remember thinking when I first began uncovering the stories that there is no central war memorial in the village, which is odd given that most places around the country however small erected a war cross or plinth with the names of the fallen as well as those who went and returned.  My own little board school in south east London still displayed in the 1950s the book listing all the students who had gone off to fight, red for those who went and survived and black for those who died.

But in our case the memorials are there, just spread across the township and apart from the one in Southern Cemetery they are associated with our churches.  So in the grounds of the Methodist Church on Manchester Road is a memorial to the fallen of both world wars while similar records exist in St Clements and St Ninian’s churches.  Sadly others have vanished.  My old friend Marjorie remembers a plaque in the MacFadyn’s building at the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Sandy Lane, but sometime during renovation it disappeared.

Many served with the Manchester Regiment but not all, and while most saw action on the Western Front others were at Gallipoli and in the campaigns in Egypt and Palestine.
For some there are a full set of military records which follow the recruit from the moment he joined up to his eventual discharge.  But for many others the record is fragmentary, consisting of his Attestation document, a medical file or letter to grieving parent and in some cases just a reference to the date and place of his death or the list of his medals.

Nevertheless there is enough to be able to write about many of our young men who went to fight and in some cases to die in battle or in a field hospital.  But here there is a dilemma and it is one I have never really been able to reconcile.  How far does writing about the lives and deaths of these young men become a grotesque intrusion?   Or by bringing their sacrifice out into the open are we not honouring them?  I am not sure I have the answer.

I suppose the easy way out is to write about them but not refer to their names.  This way the true sadness is there but there can be no danger of hurting a living relative. So I have in front of me the record of young man from Chorlton who joined aged 19 in the May of 1915, saw service in Egypt and then for the last two years of the war on the Western Front, where he was reported missing on March 23 1918 and died in hospital four months later of a skin infection while in a German POW camp.

But at the same time there is something a little dishonest in having the records, noting the fate of these young men but not naming them.  It plucks them out of a century of obscurity only to consign them again to oblivion.

And what is more in some cases I know the families, or at least I have researched them through the 19th century, and followed their lives on farms across the township while others are part of the new wave of people into Chorlton as it changed from rural community into a suburb of Manchester.

Harry Hotchen was one of these newcomers.  The family lived on Upper Chorlton Road and his father was a butcher. Ten years earlier they had lived on Brunswick Street in Chorlton on Medlock and before that in Salford where Harry had been born.

He had joined in the May of 1915 just three months short of his 19th birthday, saw service in the Middle East with the Cheshire and Essex regiments and was discharged in the February of 1919 after a spell in the Nell Lane Military Hospital after which I lose him, although there is a reference to a Harry Hotchen marrying in 1928 and dying in the June of 1954 in Chorley.

William Eric Lunt was by contrast from a family who had farmed the land since certainly the early 19th century.  There are Lunt’s buried in the parish church yard on the green and his parents and grandparents had lived in one of the farmhouses on Sandy Lane and were active in the Methodist community.  But his is an all the more darker and sadder story and I shall leave it for another time.

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20and%20the%20Great%20War

Pictures; Allied Victory Medal, awarded to servicemen and women who had served between August 1914 and November 1918, detail of a letter published in the St Clement's Parish Church Magazine  1917, courtesy of Ida Bradshaw, The Manchester Regiment marching past the Town Hall, March 21st 1915, Thomas E Scholey, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, 1914-1915 Star, awarded for service between August 5th 1914 and December 31st 1915

Letters from the Front ..... my family in the Great War

We have little in the way of documents from the men of my family who fought in the Great War.  Now given the class they came from and the distance of time that is not surprising.

And so we have just a few photographs, a handful of letters home and some military records which is not much to sum up the contribution of my immediate family.

We sent six off to fight for King and Country.  Along with two uncles, two great uncles, and my grandfather there was also my great grandfather.  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/stories-of-great-war.html

Now I have written about the experiences of my great uncle Roger before who ran off and joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the August of 1915 and even quoted from his letters and these I have brought out again.

The letters reflected the routines of army life.
“I was shooting on the ranges a day ago. We are in huts and it is fearful muddy all around, we have bayonet fighting, physical drill etc.”

There was the usual preoccupation of waiting for pay day followed by the comment that “the Canadian Government put half our pay in the bank so that of our $33 a month $16 go in the bank”

In some ways army life was suiting him, “I have” he wrote “put a bit of flesh on since you saw me last.”  But his inability to get on with authority led him to the first of his court-martials for refusing to follow orders. And in all of this there was that ever present knowledge that at some point soon he would be shipped to France.

There are no letters from his time on active service but there are his military records which track him across the three years he served and the regimental war diaries. Both are an invaluable insight into the life of a young soldier. His records cover everything from his state of health, further infringements of army discipline and his eventual discharge and journey from France to Britain and back to Canada.

But it is the war diary which best I think opens up the life of my great uncle. Now these regimental diaries had been introduced after the South African war and were meant to help assess how successful army units were under fire and so draw valuable lessons about how to improve performance. They do not record individual soldiers but describe the daily routines, including the periods of rest and recuperation, time in the front line, unit strength and even the weather. Here in great detail are descriptions of attacks and the losses incurred. So armed with these it is possible to know something of his life during those years.

So on October 15th 1917, “weather fine. Battalion carried on with musketry and squad drill during the morning. Afternoon Recreation. Attack in the north continued, all objectives gained”

So here is the usual mundane and routine of army life, but mixed in are the reports of planned actions, real fighting and the casualties. On the morning of October 30th 1917 the diary recorded that
“Barrage opened at 5.50 am sharp. Enemy artillery opened up immediately. Our troops left trench at 5.54 am. At 6.00 am covering fire became intense. At 6.20 am supporting platoons of “A” and “C” Coys left the trench. On account of smoke it is very difficult to see any movement beyond Woodland Copse. At 6.25 am, “B” Coy, went over the top. A considerable amount of our shrapnel in bursting short at this time, some bursts occurring right over our trench.”

These were made in the heat of battle and only later typed up. This particular entry was timed at 6.30 and signed by Captain W.J. Atherton. Shortly after wards the diary continued with
“one of the runners bringing the report was wounded enroute and the other runner Pte, LeMarquand, stopped and bandaged his comrade’s wounds before delivering the report."
A little over an hour later “C” Coy had reached its objective and the men were “digging in”

Later after the fighting was over the diary attempted an assessment of the attack which reported that the artillery barrage was “generally faulty and unsatisfactory. Many causalities being inflicted by our own artillery barrage on our men before they left their trenches for attack”
“The going was extremely heavy on account of the marshy nature of the ground over which the attacking troops had to pass. In many cases men could only advance by helping one and another long.” **
And concluded with the list of causalities which amounted to 400 men killed, missing or wounded out of a total of 590.

I guess this pretty much sums up what the rest of my family went through somewhere on the Western Front.  But nothing much else has survived.  Although we do have a short letter from my uncle to my dad in the December of 1918 and it came with a Christmas postcard which well reflects the prevailing propaganda.

The Great War had ended just a month before and uncle Fergus and his battalion of the Black Watch were in Cologne.  He wrote that “Cologne was a lovelly city with some fine cinemas” but they were prohibited from fraternizing with the civilians which for a young man of 21 was a bit of a bore given the attractive young women he came across.

But duty was never far away and preparations were being made because “we are crossing the Rhine tomorrow” and there was a determination “to show the rest of the division the way as we proved to be the finest marchers during the trek to Germany.”  In its way it is as telling as that written my my great uncle in the midst of the war. There is no sense if triumphalism just pride at the job done and the one yet to do and a respect for the German city they were occupying.

So there you have it letters home from two young men , one just eighteen and the other twenty-one.

Pictures; letter from James Rogers[Roger James Hall] February 1916, and With Best Wishes for a Happy Christmas and Victorious New Year, December 1918 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Stories of the Great War

The Great War has now passed out of living memory.

 For most of us today the abiding image of that conflict are the rows of military gravestones, many bearing that simple inscription “A soldier of the Great War.”
And if we were pushed we might recall those grainy black and white pictures of soldiers staring back at us, and the poems of Wilfred Own and the other war poets expressing “the pity of war.”

But for everyone who died many more came back.  Most like the men of my family rarely spoke of the experiences nor would I expect them to.  By the time I was old enough to speak to them as an adult that war had been over for the best part of sixty years and they were older than I am now.

Which is a salutary thought for my memories from being 17 and 18 which was the age when most of them went are at best hazy and certainly fragmentary, add to that the awful things they must have seen and it is not surprising that they said so little.

We sent six off to fight for King and Country.  Along with two uncles, two great uncles, and my grandfather there was also my great grandfather.  They either volunteered or were called back to “the colours”.  And because my grandmother was German we had family members in the forces of Imperial Germany.  All of which has led me to reflect that for us the Great War was nothing less than a family civil war.

Their motives for going were as mixed as their experiences.  My great grandfather had served as a young man in the late 1880s in the army of the old Queen and was still on the reserve list, although he had been turned down for active service in the second South African War he rejoined in 1914.

In the case of one my great uncles it was an opportunity to escape from a life he was unhappy with.  As a British Home Child* he had gone to Canada in the May of 1914 aged just 16, spent a difficult year on farms across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick finally running away, changing his name and lying about his age to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the August 1915.

And his brother who was my grandfather also lied about his age and joined up in the May of 1916.
Other members of the family seem to have volunteered ahead of the call up.  But like so much of my family history the documentary evidence is thin on the ground.  But what there is does run against the popular view of the struggle.  My great uncle Roger was forever coming up against military authority, my grandfather prolonged his stay in the army until 1922 and my two uncles rose from the ranks to NCO and officer.

Nothing particularly odd in all of this except that it is my family and my story and over the next few weeks I want to explore more of their experiences.

Pictures; Montague Hall 1914, George Simpson circa 1918, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
* British Home Children were children sent to Canada and later Australia and settled on farms and as domestic servants

A British Home Child at war

I am proud of the contribution British Home Children made to the history of Canada. These young boys and girls crossed the Atlantic, facing daunting challenges in difficult circumstances and often on their own. Not for them the familiar streets in British towns or the comfort of close families.

Yet they made good, fulfilled their contracts, went on to productive lives, raising families and rarely talked about their past.
And I suppose the greatest contribution they made was to serve in the armed forces during the two world wars. Women as well as men “took part in Canada's war effort in large numbers, not only through direct participation in the armed forces and auxiliary services, but also in business, industry and agriculture while large numbers of Canadian men served overseas.” *

My great uncle was one of those who went. Aged just 17 and having been in Canada for just a year he enlisted in the August of 1915. Now I have written about his troubled first year in Canada on farms across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and his equally colourful record of four court-martials but today I just want to explore the experiences of a young man who lied about his age, changed his name and spent three years fighting for his adopted country.

I am sure his was a common experience. After enlisting he was posted to Britain in the November of 1915 and was stationed at East Sandling in Kent in preparation for going to France.

A few of his letters have survived and they reflected the routines of army life.
“I was shooting on the ranges a day ago. We are in huts and it is fearful muddy all around, we have bayonet fighting, physical drill etc.”
The usual preoccupation of waiting for pay day followed by the comment that “the Canadian Government put half our pay in the bank so that of our $33 a month $16 go in the bank”


In some ways army life was suiting him, “I have” he wrote “put a bit of flesh on since you saw me last.” But his inability to get on with authority led him to the first of his court-martials for refusing to follow orders. And in all of this there was that ever present knowledge that at some point soon he would be shipped to France.

There are no letters from his time on active service but there are his military records which track him across the three years he served and the regimental war diaries. Both are an invaluable insight into the life of a young soldier. His records cover everything from his state of health, further infringements of army discipline and his eventual discharge and journey from France to Britain and back to Canada.

But it is the war diary which best I think opens up the life of my great uncle. Now these regimental diaries had been introduced after the South African war and were meant to help assess how successful army units were under fire and so draw valuable lessons about how to improve performance. They do not record individual soldiers but describe the daily routines, including the periods of rest and recuperation, time in the front line, unit strength and even the weather. Here in great detail are descriptions of attacks and the losses incurred. So armed with these it is possible to know something of his life during those years.

So on October 15th 1917, “weather fine. Battalion carried on with musketry and squad drill during the morning. Afternoon Recreation. Attack in the north continued, all objectives gained”


So here is the usual mundane and routine of army life, but mixed in are the reports of planned actions, real fighting and the casualties. On the morning of October 30th 1917 the diary recorded that
“Barrage opened at 5.50 am sharp. Enemy artillery opened up immediately. Our troops left trench at 5.54 am. At 6.00 am covering fire became intense. At 6.20 am supporting platoons of “A” and “C” Coys left the trench. On account of smoke it is very difficult to see any movement beyond Woodland Copse. At 6.25 am, “B” Coy, went over the top. A considerable amount of our shrapnel in bursting short at this time, some bursts occurring right over our trench.”

These were made in the heat of battle and only later typed up. This particular entry was timed at 6.30 and signed by Captain W.J. Atherton. Shortly after wards the diary continued with
“one of the runners bringing the report was wounded enroute and the other runner Pte, LeMarquand, stopped and bandaged his comrade’s wounds before delivering the report."
A little over an hour later “C” Coy had reached its objective and the men were “digging in”

Later after the fighting was over the diary attempted
an assessment of the attack which reported that the artillery barrage was “generally faulty and unsatisfactory. Many causalities being inflicted by our own artillery barrage on our men before they left their trenches for attack”
“The going was extremely heavy on account of the marshy nature of the ground over which the attacking troops had to pass. In many cases men could only advance by helping one and another long.” **
And concluded with the list of causalities which amounted to 400 men killed, missing or wounded out of a total of 590.

Now that the Great War has faded from living memory and the conflict becomes just a topic to be taught in schools and a source for books, films and television programmes, there may be a temptation to gloss over the sacrifice made by all those who fought. I hope not.

Most of us across Europe and in Canada, and all the countries of the old Empire as well as the USA will have relatives who took part. In my own family I can count two uncles, a great uncle, a grandfather and great grandfather as well as family who served in the forces of Imperial Germany. It didn’t turn out to be the war to end all wars but on their return those veterans tried to make the most of the peace that that followed. And I hope that my own British Home Child did the same.

Picture; detail of one of the letters written by my great uncle and George Bradford Simpson with friends, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Library and Archives Canada http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/military/025002-6070-e.html

**War Diary of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada

More from Geffen in the Netherlands

Just when some question the value and relevance of closer European ties a correspondence from a Dutch friend reinforces my belief that we are stronger as a continent if we work closer together.

I first began corresponding with Ruud about a year ago and have mentioned his work researching the young men who died fighting around his home town of Geffen close to the Rhine.

 We worked on the story of Sgt Blatherwick who was killed when his aircraft was shot down in the July of 1942 and went on to collaborate in tracking the details of British soldiers who died as the allies pushed toward to the Rhine crossings in the closing stages of the war. 

Ruud has also tracked some of the German servicemen who died in the area. Upper most in his mind has been the wish to commemorate all who sacrificed their lives including the civilians of the town and to pass on details to surviving family members which he has been able to do.

I was so pleased that his efforts will now be rewarded by a permanent memorial in Geffen to all who died and a reminder of the conflicts which tore Europe apart in the 20th century.

My generation was born just after the war when the physical evidence of the conflict was everywhere, and I grew up against a backdrop of films and comics which focused on the struggle with Germany and Italy. And yet today I find it inconceivable that such wars were fought.

 All the more reason that we should work together not only to solve the problems of the present and the future but also try to uncover and share the fate of some who perished.

Picture; war grave in Geffen from the collection of Ruud Verhagen

Lost Lives Part Two

Sgt George Blatherwick died when his Stirling aircraft was shot down on a night raid in July 1942.

 My Dutch friend and I had been researching this young man. Ruud had done most of the work but I was able to track his early life and with the help of Oliver Bailey came up with the operational records of the squadron including a list of the aircrew who were killed over Geffen.

Picture; Record from the National Archive

Lost lives Part One

For me one of the great advantages of the internet is not only the ease with which you can communicate with people but the opportunities it has opened up to trawl historical records which previously would be very difficult to access.

I have over the last year asked the advice of an expert in English rural history who works at the University of Auckland, discussed Manchester Chartists with a professor in Leeds and discussed the finer points of an Arnot stove with a chap from Kent.

At the same time I have trawled the sources of the Library and Archive Canada and downloaded out of print 19th books as well of course as visiting census returns, parish records, the Quarter sessions and tithe lists.

So I was pleased to respond to a request to help a fellow historian in the Netherlands track the life of Sgt Blatherwick and his family and so honour a young man who died on a bombing raid in July 1942.
Ruud Verhagen has been researching the British, and German servicemen who died in and near his village during the Second World War.

George Blatherwick was just 20 and a wireless operator and front gunner. His aircraft was intercepted by a German night fighter and shot down over Geffen. Along with the rest of the crew he was buried in the garden of the local parish priest and later reinterred in the Uden War Cemetery.

Ruud’s starting point was the brief biographical details that he was the son of George and Ellen Blatherwick of Clayton in Manchester, and that they had been married in Chorlton in 1918 and were both buried in Southern Cemetery.

A search of the parish marriage records drew a blank but then of course I reasoned he might be a Roman Catholic or Non Conformist. The census returns for 1911 were more revealing and there I found two George Blatherwicks’ one of whom lived here. However it was the other George who proved more promising. He was aged just 16 in 1911 and lived in east Manchester. Tracking earlier census returns it was clear the family had lived in the same area since the 1860s.

This George would have been called up for the Great War and sure enough his military records had survived. He served from 1915 till 1919 and amongst the documents was a reference to his marriage to Ellen Young in December 1918. They were married in a church which was close to his family home and which is still standing, although about to undergo conversion into flats.

Now Clayton is not far from the church and where the family had lived and a search of old telephone directories brought up an address in Clayton just off the Ashton New Road. Close by is the old Board School opened in 1900 and still in use today and it is more than possible that Sgt Blatherwick may well have attended here in the 1930s.

To be continued

Pictures; Sgt George Blatherwick, and his gravestone, from the collection of Rudd Verhagen