Grimsby's Own - The Story of the Chums Part 3

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They weren’t getting up, they were being dropped by bullets THE Chums had been drawn up with ‘A’ Company on the right, ‘B’ Company in the centre and ‘C’ Company – more or less now opposite the mine’s crater – on the left. ‘D’ Company was held in reserve for the second phase of the attack.

KILLED INSTANTLY: Lieut Leslie ‘Cosh’ Cummins, A Company, killed in action July 1, 1916.

Harold Smith, in civilian life an accounts clerk, in death still clutching his rifle.

Few officers escaped. Capt Charles Bellamy lay seriously (in fact mortally) wounded and Lieut Coots Green, who had seen Cummins die before his eyes, was also hit and wounded.

Sgt Tommy Moore, only recently married, was shot urging his men in ‘B’ Company forward. Sgt Edgar Whitton, ‘A’ Company, fell dead only yards from his own trenches and Pte Percy Walker, the son of the New Clee station-master, died by his side.

The toll mounted and the ranks thinned. The ground was soon strewn with the dead and dying, the latter dragging themselves into shell holes which gave only scant protection. Wounded men were hit time and time again and lay helpless beneath the hail of machine gun fire and shrapnel.

Pte Herbert Ayre, shot in the chest and then shot again in the legs as he lay helpless in the open, was again hit in the back by shell splinters. Yet he was to survive.

Alf Cook also lived to tell the tale despite the shrapnel in his side and the bullet lodged in his spine.

None was so weighed down as the battalion’s signallers. In addition to their ordinary kit they were encumbered with reels of wire which, theoretically, they were supposed to unwind and so maintain telephone contact as the advance progressed.

The fate of the ‘A’ Company team was typical of the remainder.

L/Cpl Eddie Powell and Pte Eddie Burrell did their best to wind out the wire.

Under the unrelenting fire they too made it to the modest shelter of the crater.

Three times they ventured from the crater’s lip to fulfil their task. On the last sortie they were both shot dead.

Not far from them lay 20-year-old Harold Cammack whose parents ran the Bull Ring Coffee Hall, and John Campling, an only son, and Sydney White, the son of a town councillor. They were all dead.

The German bullets continued to find their mark.

L/Cpl Francis White, 6ft 4in tall, a footballer of quality (and no relation to has namesake, Sydney) also fell dead.

And in the space of a few minutes Allen Grant, P Percy Clarke, L/Cpl Fred Greenaway, Norman Simpson and Bob Parker, a farmer’s son from Humberston, all lay within a short distance of each other, all among the shell holes, all among their friends, their first but last fight over.

Exactly one month short of his 19th birthday, ex St James’ schoolboy Charles Strange, son of the head cashier of Barclay’s bank, headed for the German lines before a bullet shattered his thigh.

When night fell he teamed up with a pal, who had been blinded, one man’s legs and another man’s eyes getting them both to the safety of their own lines.

Yet they struggled forward, “No one shrank back” wrote a survivor.

L/Cpl Bert Smart, a clerk with Sutcliffe’s, fell after being hit in the head by shrapnel. Sgt Arthur Brown, a Keelby man, fell and died caught in machine gun fire.

Pte GE John Barker, an apprentice on the docks, fell into a shell hole his knee shattered by a bullet. Pte William Lewis, wounded in the head and blinded, groped wildly for a place to hide. Not far from him Pte John Chapman was shot and killed.

Pte Ralph Thompson, one of the Battalion’s bombers and a well known footballer, lay mortally wounded and near him, also dead, was one of the Wakefield lads, Roland Marsden.

The German fire was relentless and accurate. The Maxims had been trained to fire low and many men were wounded in the legs.

One man wrote later: “Then I was hit in the back. I got my equipment off and felt blood and managed to get into a shell hole. I laid there an hour and then, as the fire got closer and closer, made my way from shell hole to shell hole. And then I met a companion and we slowly made it back to our trenches.”

General Ingouville Williams was watching the progress of his Division’s front line. “Never have I seen men go through such a barrage of artillery, they advanced, as on parade, and never flinched.” ● Continued on Monday and read each week’s chapters as an online e-book, uploaded at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

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FELLED BY A BULLET: Pte (later Major) Jack Oldroyd.

At the sound of the whistles, the clambering, slipping, sliding and groping for hand and footholds began.

“Over the top lads,” shouted the less encumbered officers.

“Our first line went over the top and then Fritz opened out with his machine guns from all quarters not to mention a real hail of shrapnel and ‘coal boxes’.

There was no reluctance, no holding back, no hesitancy of any sort as the Chums, grossly burdened by the weight of (what transpired to be quite unnecessary) equipment hauled themselves up the slippery edge of the fire step and walked away towards the German lines.

“We had not gone far before down went one man, then another and then another ...”

The adjutant, left behind to watch, admired the men’s order.

“They advanced in four straight lines, one line behind the other, obeying the plan to run 10 yards then drop down.

“I thought,” said Captain Emerson, “that is was wonderful the way they were dropping in perfect co-ordination.

“But then I noticed they were not getting up. They were being dropped by bullets.”

But not a man turned back.

They said young Lieutenant Raymond Eason was the first man up and over. But who is to say on a battalion front of three companies?

The toll was appalling.

Eason, who had only just celebrated his 21st birthday, was hit almost immediately. Several saw him fall.

Pte Charlie Mason stopped and knelt beside him.

Eason’s last words were to ask him for a drink of water. Then Mason pressed on hoping to find his brother Stanley, but Stanley had already been shot and killed.

Lieutenant Leslie Cummins, only 24, leading his ‘A’ Company platoon and shouting to his men: “Over the top and good luck to you all” paused to drag a wounded soldier to some cover. As he straightened up from his labours he was killed instantly, shot through the heart.

Both the Oldroyd boys were in ‘A’ Company and both streamed after Cummins only losing touch when a bullet in the knee felled Jack. Harold pressed on alone.

Pte Joe Winship of ‘C’ Company, who, moments before, had been laughing and joking at the thought of the walk-over to come, saw friends either side of him fall dead and took refuge in a shell hole.

And there he stayed for 12 hours with four others, wondering how they would escape from their hopeless predicament.

In the event all did when night fell.

The ‘C’ Company commander, Capt Tom Baker, fell mortally wounded.

Cpl Jack Nickerson, a teacher at Barcroft Street School, already winged but going forward spite of it, was hit again and killed.

Drummer Wriggleswoth, son of the College art master, lay wounded near Pte

We continue the serialisation of Grimsby’s Own: The Story Of The Chums, by Peter Chapman. Today, Chapter 2: The Battle Of The Somme continues ...

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The Story Of The Chums

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UP AND OVER: The toll of the Battle Of The Somme, on July 1, 1916, was ‘appalling’.

MORTALLY WOUNDED: Capt Charles Bellamy, killed in action, July 1, 1916.

CAPT TOM BAKER: ‘C’ Company Commander, killed in action July 1, 1916.

RECENTLY MARRIED: Sgt Tommy Moore, ‘B’ Company, killed July 1, 1916.

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He crawled over the battlefield examining each corpse. He never found his brother ...

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FROM the Heligoland position and from La Boiselle, the German fire continued, sweeping No Man’s Land.

And yet, with stupefying bravery, the Chums attempted to carry out their task.

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had deflected splinters.

As the day progressed so it became hot.

In No Man’s Land, shattered and bleeding, thirsty and ruined, lay what remained of the once proud 10th Battalion the Lincolnshire Regiment, subjected to ceaseless sniper fire, pinned down, helpless and largely beyond rescue.

But, as evening turned to dusk and then

In No Man’s Land, shattered and bleeding, lay what remained of the once proud 10th Battalion the Lincolnshire Regiment, subjected to ceaseless sniper fire, pinned down, helpless and largely beyond rescue to the kindly black cloak of night, there was a chance to stir from refuges and shell holes.

Sgt Dick Cammack had been hit in the shoulder almost immediately and had lain in the open until dusk. He slipped off his equipment and attempted the long crawl back.

The snipers were still busy and around him men were being hit repeatedly. “I stopped everywhere possible to cut off equipment and to give some a drink. But I was not able to do much.

“Then I lost my way and landed in the

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“With the utmost steadiness and courage not to be surpassed by any troops in the world, they gallantly tried to get across that terrible space between the opposing lines,” wrote the regimental historian after the war.

One tiny group, against all odds and taking some cover from the mine’s fresh crater, did actually reach the enemy trenches, bombing their way up then, hurling grenades, remembering all that Oldroyd had taught them, helping to protect the flank of others coming alongside.

Second Lieut Hendin, with just three WOUNDED: Pte Ernest ‘Dick’ Balderson, wounded in the chest, July 1, 1916, one of the last men, got as far forward as anyone and survivors of the Battalion, who died aged 90. was awarded the Military Cross for his endeavours.

But the task was too great, the fire from the German positions too ferocious.

At 9am, ‘D’ Company was in turn committed to the battle. Major Vignoles, leading them, was severely wounded in his left hand. Beside him, the faithful Coddington was killed immediately.

“As we went over,” wrote one of their officers, “the noise was terrific. Yet, looked at broadly, there was nothing horrible about it.

“No Man’s Land was littered with men apparently lying down. At first it was difficult to realise that they were all casualties, and that what few were left of the Battalion had pressed on.”

But their fate was no better. Sgt Harry Callear, one of the battalion’s most popular NCOs, was shot within yards of his start lime. Of 64 in his platoon only 10 were unhurt.

Pte Clifford Beels, who proudly bore the Chums number nine and was the 24-year-old only child of a Grimsby barber, died by his side.

Pte Frank Miller, who had volunteered at 16 and had been the Medical Officer’s orderly, was one of the men ‘lying down’ shot through the ankle, so was John Simpson with shrapnel in his leg, so was Ernest Balderon ... all bodies in a nightmare landscape.

Pte Fred Lutkin lying in a shell hole with Sid Thompson – the sole survivor of three brothers in the Battalion – prayed silently in their joint distress.

There were, of course, famous escapes.

Pte Bernard Kent’s life was certainly saved by his cigarette case. He’d been hit by shrapnel in the back, chest and PPTE CHARLES STRANGE: Wounded July 1, 1916. shoulders. But his case, over his heart,

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crater of the mine we had exploded.

“Then I saw someone move. It was Ralph Thompson. I told him I’d be with him as soon as possible. I waited a few more minutes to let the machine guns quieten down. He was hit with a machine gun bullet and then with shrapnel. I gave him a drink and he was quite conscious when I left him.

“I was about ten minutes sawing through his equipment with a blunt knife and then I got his rifle from under him and made him a pillow of his steel helmet. I think his left arm was broken.

At least he said it was ...

“His legs were useless and he asked me to move them for him which I did. I thought at the time his back was broken.”

But Thompson, lying just 120 yards out into No Man’s Land, never made it.

Sgt Cammack pressed on and met L/Cpl Borman. Tom Borman had seen his pal Pte Bobbie Roberts hit and killed earlier but had carried on until he too was hit in the head.

He’d spent 14 hours in a shell hole, sniped at, and at 10pm, while crawling back, met Cammack.

Together they reached the dressing station at 1am on the Sunday morning.

Thus did Saturday, July 1, 1916 run its course and this were the Chums destroyed.

Various are the casualty figures for that mindless slaughter. Certainly the battalions was sacrificed.

During the following two days – the Sunday and the Monday, July 2 and 3 – further attempts were made by what few men and offers remained.

The official toll when the Chums were finally withdrawn from the battle (if such a one-sided contest can be graced with such a name) was 15 officers and 487 men

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The Story Of The Chums

PTE RALPH THOMPSON: ‘A’ Company, killed in action, July 1, 1916. killed, missing and wounded.

Many were never to recover from those wounds. Many were sent home to hospitals the length and breadth of England never to fight again and many bore the physical reminders of the fight for the remainder of their days.

The regimental history records laconically: “A few officers and men of the 10th Lincolnshire got across No Man’s Land and attached themselves to other units.

“As a whole, the Battalion was hung up and could do no more.”

In sick bays and hospital wards, officers and men recovered their senses and attempted to recall, in letters home, the events that had put them there.

Major Vignoles, recovering from his hand wound in London, was concerned about the fate of the soldiers he had led, particularly his servant, and wrote from his bed in No 3 General Hospital Wandsworth. “Coddington served me personally in the most devoted manner and I am anxious his wife would be spared money troubles if it is in my power to help.”

And Mrs Vignoles also wrote a most moving letter to the widowed Annie Coddington and the four fatherless children in Rendel Street.

Second Lieut J H Turnbull who had gone with ‘D’ Company wrote home from hospital in Oxford.

“I took the platoon over in Indian file, led one section and carried a bag of ammunition. Was very puzzled by the rotten crater. Used it to screen us from La Boiselle and goodness knows how many machine guns opened up on us. We all dropped. I started to crawl when I got hit in the back. Cpl Turton helped me to the crater. I couldn’t move about and felt very dazed.

“We consolidated around the lip of the crater and found the sandbags useful.

But our parapet was very crumbly. There was a certain amount of cover but very shallow. I kind of dozed most of the time.

“Some of the fit men wanted to bolt for it and leave a good 100 wounded who couldn’t walk. I asked them what the hell they thought they were doing.

“I left the crater about 2.30am on Sunday. I’m not feeling very grand. It was a beastly shock getting my spine hit.”

His friend and fellow ‘D’ Company Subaltern Bernard Anderson attempted a letter from his bed in Chatham Military Hospital.

“I was wounded in the left thigh and it

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L/CPL EDWARD A POWELL: Killed in action, July 1, 1916.

is causing me a lot of trouble and pain.

“I am sorry to say I did not get very far.

“After I got the men together I found I had 30 left. I found also that the Boche were still in the front line in large numbers. I counted 17 in one bay.

“I hope you will excuse this fearful scrawl but I cannot more from one position.”

They were the last words Anderson wrote. He died a fortnight later.

A Military Cross with his name upon it was send to his parents.

On July 2, Jack Oldroyd enquired after his brother who, he was told, had been wounded and taken to a first aid post. But it was not so. He begged permission to go out into No Man’s Land and, despite his shattered knee, crawled over the battlefield examining each corpse in turn.

It was, he recalled to the end of his life, the worst day he had ever spent. He never found his brother.

FOOTNOTE: Purely as a matter of record, attention must be drawn to the battalion war diary (now at Sobraon

Barracks, Lincoln) which reveals a curious error on the part of the CO, Lt Col Cordeaux.

In his record for the day’s events, he says the Chums went into action 20 officers and 822 ORs strong. Of them, he writes, four officers were killed, 10 wounded and one was reported missing.

Of the ORs, 66 were killed, 259 were wounded and 162 were missing.

But he then lists 22 officers, naming Major G L Bennett as the adjutant and completely omitting the name of Lt (later Captain) Charles Emerson who was, in fact, the adjutant during the period July 1-4, 1916.

There is, lest the record ever fails to include it, no doubt whatever that Emerson was indeed present in the capacity of adjutant both those days before and after the Somme. ● Continued tomorrow and read each week’s chapters as an online e-book, uploaded at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

SURVIVOR: PPte Sid Thompson, ‘A’ Company, sole survivor of the three Thompson brothers.

SGT HARRY CALLEAR: ‘D’ Company, killed in action, July 1, 1916.

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PTE JAMES DOWMAN: Killed in action.

PTE SIDNEY DIXON: Killed in action, July 1, 1916.

PTE G E BARKER: Although wounded on the Somme, survived and became the

The cream of the town was NEWS, good or bad, travelled slowly in 1916.

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“I know Mr Eason personally and had a great liking for him, although I was not in his Company, and always found him to be a gentleman in all ways. I write this thinking it will be little comfort to know that the last offices were performed by someone of his own battalion.”

The death of the Mayor’s son, RP Eason, touched the town.

But softening the blow was sentiment permissible in the cause of lessening grief. There would be many such letters. Lt Col Cordeaux wrote home.

“You have heard how the Battalion suffered from intense machine gun fire from La Boiselle and Heligoland. It was never able to cross the German first line trench but fortunately the new crater gave some protection otherwise our casualties would have been far heavier.

“Nothing could have been finer than the advance and gallantry of the Battalion; officers and men were absolutely splendid. No man could have done more. The Brigadier has sent a letter to this effect.

“We were withdrawn on the night of the 4th. I find life a bit of a strain.”

Brig Gen RC Gore, once of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and who replaced Fitton, had also seen the advance into the jaws of death.

“Will you please express to your Battalion,” he wrote to Cordeaux, “my admiration of their fearless conduct in the battle on July 1.”

“Having to start further back than the two right battalions, they had to bear the brunt of the full force of the machine gun fire during their advance across Sausage Valley.”

“They never wavered but pressed forward; their ranks were too thin, as their casualties show, to gain their final objectives although they got well into Germans lines and assisted in holding, for two days, the exposed left flank which became the pivot of the successful advance of the divisions on our right.

“No troops could have done better and it was no fault of their’s that they did not reach their allotted objective.”

No fault of theirs ...

As Lord Cardigan said immediately after the

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It was, of course, no fault of Cordeaux’s nor Gore’s nor indeed of Ingouville Williams’, who was himself killed near Mametz on July 22.

La Boiselle and the other fistful of small, fortified and inconsequential villages at which the New Armies had hurled their exuberant defiance, did eventually fall into British hands on July 6, surrounded and cut off.

But the Chums were not present to witness the event.

Their shattered remnants had been withdrawn to tents in a wood at Hennencourt where reinforcements arrived.

That March conscription had been introduced at home.

But with exceptions, they were not from the same mould as the First Hundred Thousand.

Most were unfit and unprepared third-line Territorials, conscripts with only three months training behind them, small drafts arriving unannounced from the Northamptons, the North Staffs, the South Staffs and the Middlesex, only a few from the 11th Lincolns.

On July 24 a Chum officer wrote home: “We are still in bivouacs in a wood, spending very strenuous days licking into shape the large drafts of men we have recently received. Some of them have only been enlisted four months.

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Hindered not only by poor communications but positively impeded by the well meaning hand of the censor, the unmitigated tragedy of the opening days of the prolonged battle of the Some was veiled from the ken of the public.

On July 4, three days after the battle had begun, Grimsby people went into the Tivoli Cinema to see ‘by special request’ film footage taken during those now distant training days at Brocklesby.

But the men they could see moving stiffly on the flickering screen were in fact lying stiffly in France, many of them dead.

Not a soul had an inkling of the fate of their sons, their brothers, their husbands, their sweethearts, their nephews, their grandsons.

By design or by accident, the Grimsby Daily Telegraph was slow in receiving or revealing the depth of the disaster.

On the 5th it reported that the account in German communiques of the action on the Somme “is entirely inaccurate” in reporting “very heavy losses” in the ranks of the Allies.

But a leading article in the same paper revealed that “all speak of the magnificent gallantry of the troops. The men of the New Armies are proving themselves to be splendid fighting material and they have displayed that real grit, discipline and courage in facing difficult situations. Our infantry are fine.”

Brave words. Official words. But Grimsby people know just who the men of the “New Ar mies” were and on July 10 the first trickle of casualty figures began to appear.

“Major Vignoles not seriously wounded” said the first revelation. Over the days that followed the glass cleared and the terrible picture became clear. “We regret to report the death in action of L/Cpl Alf Milson, formerly cashier at the Orient Steam Fishing Co” and incidentally a member, at one time, of the Telegraph staff.

On the 15th came more of the same. L/Sgt Oliver Tuxworth shouldered the sort of responsibility which came with his rank. He had a letter to write to the Mayor, Councillor Eason and his wife at their Scartho home.

“It is with sorrow that I write to tell you that I had the sad duty to bury Lt Eason. I found him in a shell hole, quite as tho he was asleep and I am assured in my own mind that he had not suffered.

I laid him in his grave and covered him as well as I could and marked his grave so that it will be known in the future at least. I could find it any time.

“Our divisional commander was killed on the 22nd. I was in charge of the burial party. As he lay mortally wounded he asked that the Royal Scots might provide the firing party.

“You know my antipathy to bagpipes. But the lament Flower Of The Forest was soul-stirring.

There were very few dry eyes among those present.

“Although he was a regular martinet, he was loved by every man in his command. He died as he would have wished, on the front.

“One night before July 1, and when a quantity of ammonal was being taken up to the front in wagons, he came up and found the column halted.

He asked why.

“Told the road in front was being shelled, he took charge of the first vehicle and led it through the shelled area. He never asked men to do things he would not do himself.”

When the new drafts were absorbed, the re-formed Chums moved back into the line near Bazentin-le-Petit for six days of sporadic raiding and fighting.

The conditions, almost defying description, were, at best, appalling.

Colonel Cordeaux had made his HQ in an old German dressing station which was far from salubrious.

But in the trenches, the men reeled from the stench of rotting corpses which lay, some part

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The Story Of The Chums

CPL HARRY PRESCOTT: Awarded the Military Medal, July 1, 1916.

SGT JIM HAYHURST

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L/CPL FRANK WOODLIFFE

so needlessly sacrificed ...

buried, some in the open, decomposing in the August sunshine.

The actions in which they took part were, once again, catastrophic. Enemy shellfire was intense and accurate and in those six days there were a further 200 casualties.

On August 8, Lieut Arthur Pratte was standing in a trench talking to fellow subaltern Hugh Murphy when a shrapnel shell burst close to them. Pratte, the violinist, who had been married for less than six months, his bride a teacher for the Municipal College, was killed instantly.

Murphy was carried to a nearby dug-out but died 20 minutes later.

Colonel Cordeaux wrote to Pratte’s father, now with the 11th Battalion. “Your boy was killed instantaneously, Murphy dying a few minutes later. Your son has been with us from the beginning and I feel his loss very keenly. So few of our original officers are left.

“He had, for the past few weeks, been in charge of ‘A’ Company and gave every promise of making a very good company commander. You have the truest sympathy of all ranks of the Battalion.”

Capt Henry Newsum also wrote to Major Pratte.

“Your son was the essence of coolness and courage. I shall miss him as a friend.”

The scrappy, filthy and costly fighting around Bazentin-le-Petit was to be almost the last of the prolonged Battle Of The Somme in which the Chums were to take part.

There was a period in which they were shunted in and out of the line, including one stretch at Bois Grenier notable only for two raids – one in October and the other in December – both of which were disastrous.

The first failed because the time allowed for it was too brief, the wire in front of the German trenches defying artillery damage and remaining uncut. Its sole merit was the award of the Military Cross to both Capt Newsum and 2nd Lieut R Brett and Military Medals to Sgt JL Plowman, Cpl FL Westley and Pte E Hurst.

On November 18, the ‘Somme’ was declared officially over.

Verdun, said Sir Douglas Haig, was relieved, the Germans had been held and their forces on the Western Front worn down.

The Somme, said Lincolnshire’s very own general Sir William Robertson, marked a “definite stage on the road to victory”.

The politicians maintained that it had been a ghastly failure. Winston Churchill wrote that “the actual battle fronts were not appreciably altered. No strategic advantage of any kind had

been gained.”

The historian (and infantry subaltern) Basil Liddell Hart, witness to all the actions in which the Chums took part, described the plan as a “tragedy of errors”. It had been inflexible and impossible. The battle had been lost before it had ever started. The men had been rows of ninepins to be knocked down.

The highest losses had been in the Fourth Army.

In that army the highest casualties had been in the 34th division which lost 80 per cent of its strength on July 1 alone, most of whom fell in the first 15 minutes.

In all the Battle Of The Somme claimed 400,000 British soldiers, 200,00 French soldiers and 440 Ger mans.

The Allied ‘gain’ was, at most, five miles of useless and irrelevant territory.

Although it may sound a slight to those who followed on into the ranks of the 10th Battalion Lincolnshire regiment, it must be said that the Chums were never quite the same unit.

The cream of the town, volunteers all, imbued with the most laudable aspirations and the highest motives of service to their country were – and let it be said, like so many Pals battalions – needlessly sacrificed.

The columns and columns of names published in casualty lists in the Grimsby News and the Grimsby Telegraph are, to this day, the most frightful testimony to a lack of generalship and a dearth of imagination on the battlefields of France and Flanders.

It is difficult to find excuse.

The white-hot patriotism which had motivated all those who joined the Chums had been doused.

“Idealism,” wrote AJP Taylor, “perished on the Somme”.

It was impossible, given the squalor, the disappointment and disillusionment for the fire of enthusiasm to burn as brightly after November 1916.

Instead a gritty resignation took over, a determination to go on and on for as long as was necessary, to defeat the enemy. The war was to be no more than a slogging match.

Those remaining of the original Chums formed a cadre around which the battalion was virtually reconstructed.

Seventy years after the event, people still speak of the agony of the Somme.

They do so because until July 1, fighting battles had been the job of professional soldiers, not clerks, not fish merchants, not farm lads and Wesleyan chapel stewards.

On that day the term World War achieved a fulness. It was the day when professionals did not fight battles alone and in isolation to determine the fate of nations.

Grimsby, as unmilitary a place as could be found, was wholly unable to come to terms with its own losses and groped for means of expression.

On August 12, 1916, the town council met, corporately stunned by the almost incomprehensible news reaching it from France.

“This council desires to express sympathy to the Deputy Mayor Coun J W Eason and Mrs Eason

PTE CHARLIE HARVEY: Mentioned in Despatches.

and to Coun and Mrs C White in their bereavement for the loss of a son each in action in France.

“And with the parents and relatives of other Grimsby men who have fallen in battle.

“The council places on record their pride at the gallantry and heroism of the men of Grimsby and district in the military engagements which recently took place on the Western Front.”

What was to be said to the relatives of L/Cpl Charles Greenaway, once, and so lately, with Grange and Wintringham. His chum, Pte Tom Crow, tried. “We have worked, played and fought together, side by side, and there has not been a more staunch and loyal section of pals in any battalion in the army. I have been invalided home. but you have the consolation of knowing that Charles did his duty and gave his young life for a great cause.”

Captain Emerson wrote countless letters, all sincere, all from the heart. Of Pte Eric Davidson, he wrote: “He was a quiet, sincere and kind-hearted lad. I feel proud I knew him.”

To Leslie Cummins’ parents, he wrote: “I have lost a dear friend.” To the parents of Pte Harold Stanley, a fish docks clerk, he said: “He proved a most capable and worthy young man.”

One of the finest and most enduring of gestures was made by the recently married Lt Coote Green. When his son was born he was named Raymond in memory of Lt Eason.

Jack Oldroyd, like so many wounded members of the battalion, eventually returned to England.

Compounding his own grief with a lie, he told his parents that he had found Harold and had buried him.

It was all a prolonged agony, an agony to be felt for years to come, an agony never to fade or diminish, an agony never to be belittled.

They wept for those who had died, those who had been wounded and those for whom the war went on, far from home. They wept, too, those that knew, for the futility of it all.

But the Somme was, also, a bond that was to survive for a lifetime.

For to have been a Chum on July 1, 1916, was to have become locally an immortal, a man part, a man “who was there”.

Today many still take comfort and boundless pride to be able to say that their husband, their father, their uncle, or their grandfather was in the Chums on the Somme. ● Continued tomorrow and read each week’s chapters as an online e-book, uploaded at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

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Grimsby Telegraph Wednesday, July 30, 2014

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First World War - centenary commemorations: Grimsby’s Own –

CPL GEORGE KIRMAN BARNARD: Wounded July 1, 1916, gassed 1917, died aged 52 as a consequence of the war.

PTE HUBERT LARKIN

PTE GORDON ABBOTT

Fourth year of war dawns

THE dazzling entrance on to centre stage of the Western Front of General Robert Nivelle – and the acceptance of his script by leading members of the cast – is a measure of the desperation reached by the Allies as 1917, the fourth year of the war, dawned.

The smooth, polished, fluent-in-English Nivelle proposed no more than a repeat of the Somme, that is to say another massive, but French, infantry attack behind an equally massive artillery bombardment ... but on the Aisne.

His powers of persuasion alone allowed other principal actors to become entranced by him. The British were asked to provide a diversion in order to hold down the Germans elsewhere. The burden was to be borne by the Third Army.

The Chums and their 34th Division were now in this Third Army. But for one of the number there was to be no role in the drama about to unfold.

Lt Col Edward Kyme Cordeaux’s time with his Battalion had come to an end. Almost 51, he had commanded the Chums throughout their terrible introduction to battle and was held in the greatest esteem by them.

In January he was given command of the 12th Labour Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment and later, promoted Colonel, appointed Labour Commandant of the 19th Army Corps.

On January 4, Major Vignoles wrote home: “I am now back in the trenches after a most enjoyable leave. Things are much as usual with one great exception. Our dear old CO! He has gone to England and his position is now filled by a younger man.

“How we shall miss Colonel Cordeaux. We seem to have grown up and become real soldiers under his care. He has endeared himself to us all, not only by his personal character but by his soldierly qualities.”

Cordeaux would probably not have withstood the extremely cold weather of that winter of 1917

My last recollection was of two officers fighting for possession of a half empty jar of SRD (Service Rum Diluted Sgt Tom Spence

We continue the serialisation of Grimsby’s Own: The Story Of The Chums, by Peter Chapman. Today, Chapter 3: The Homecoming ... in the trenches. Indeed it was so cold that, as if by mutual accord, hostilities on both sides were limited.

The Chums spent long spells in wet trenches in considerable danger and extreme discomfort, their only consolation that the Germans were as inconvenienced, and many were the cases of exposure particularly among the almost raw recruits who had, perforce, filled their ranks.

In February occurred one of those vignettes of life at the front which was to be remembered long by those who were witness to it.

“When out with my company this morning in a training area and practising the attack,” wrote one of the officers, “a very tall, distinguished looking officer came along, asked me my name, gave me a cordial handshake and then informed me he was the army commander, General Allenby.

“After the operation was complete and the company formed up, the General greeted every platoon officer and asked me to criticise the work we had just done.

“Then, with the men sitting round in quite an informal way, he made a few helpful and encouraging remarks. His departure, like his arrival, was without pomp or show and he left us with a quiet confidence which inspired us and gave us the feeling that we were in good hands.”

Allenby, who had strong family ties with Lincolnshire, commanded the army to which yet another ally-supporting task had been allotted, an attack of Arras and the River Scarpe, to support the French offensive to the South on the Aisne.

Thus it was that the Chums moved to billets in the once spectacularly beautiful town of Arras.

“The town has been badly knocked about,” one of the Chums wrote home. “Many of the buildings were mere shells with the whole of the inside gone. The French will never really forgive the Boche even if they live in peace with him for 200 years.”

Early in April, the preliminary, but short (four days) bombardment for the impending battle began. “Tho only one gun in three was firing, the din was terrific and the Boche trenches were smothered in shells,” wrote Major Vignoles.

TRENCHES: The conditions were harsh.

“During the rehearsal the CO and I were standing on a ladder looking over the top watching to see where the Boche would put up his barrage.

Then one shell burst within 50 yards of us. We have not heard it coming. With great presence of mind I took my feet off the ladder and dropped into the trench. The CO said he waited to see if I was hurt but my own idea is he followed me pretty rapidly.

“The next day (April 6) when we were being relieved, he put over several big ones for several hours at the rate of two a minute. Worthington and another officer were in Company HQ when is was blown in on them. They managed to crawl out through a small hole.

“Another officer (2nd Lieut McArthur) was leaving ‘D’ Company when a shell blew in and buried him. He could not be seen and it was thought he might have got out.

“While they were looking for him another shell landed in the same place and blew the earth off him without hurting anyone. He was, of course, shaken but unhurt.”

But it is often the mundane aspects of life which are most remembered by serving soldiers. April 8, the day before the opening of the battles on what

was jointly Vimy Ridge, the Scarpe and Arras, was a day of brilliant sunshine, a welcome break in the weather for the Chums who had been about 25 days in filthy trenches.

Most revelled in a good wash, confident in the morrow and refreshed by two complete nights of rest.

“I saw them off as they marched away to the trenches,” wrote Vignoles. “I felt a bit sad that I was not going to help them. Today they are making history. But I am not with them in case the CO should become a casualty. They all moved off cheerfully, pretty confident that, as they put it, they were going to give the Boche hell.”

“It was just after sunset when we marched up,” wrote home Sgt Tom Spence. “My last recollection was of two officers fighting for possession of a half empty jar of SRD (Service Rum Diluted).

If we’ve had a full issue it would have been empty.

“I stayed behind long enough to get the winner to censor three letters while my ‘batman’ who had four empty water-bottles, filled them from the jar.

And off we doubled laughing like hell.”

It was Easter Monday, April 9, 1917.

The 34th Division, with Arras to its rear and the village of Roclincourt to its left rear (and with the River Scarpe to the South), held the front line.

The 101st Brigade were to attack in two waves, the Chums in the second following the 16th Royal Scots and the 11th Suffolks.

“Arrived in the narrow waiting trenches, with our swollen, hot, blistered feet and reeking bodies. We had about four hours to cool off,” wrote Spence.

“It was cold. Sgt Jack Biggs crawled into a dug-out for some warmth, But it was really a bomb store. He sat down on a bag of mills bombs and was just wondering what the hissing noise meant when it happened.

“We made him comfy on a stretcher and lit him a fag. What a cheerful start. Then an officer (Lieut HL Dent) got one in the arm by putting his hand over the parapet to see how the wind was for gas.”

The first wave was away at 5.30am, across the short distance of No Man’s Land and, with great success, into the German positions. The Chums, with the 15th Royal Scots, immediately moved forward to occupy the vacated trenches and watch events unfold before them.

“While in our jumping off trenches,” wrote an officer in ‘C’ Company, “we were continuously shelled with gas shells which necessitated the wearing of respirators. But it was evident that

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Grimsby Telegraph Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The Story Of The Chums

SGT HAROLD OLDROYD: Killed in action July 1, 1916.

PTE JACK SANDALL: Survivor.

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CPL JOHN DAVEY: Severely wounded April 5, 1916, and invalided home.

as Chums face new battles

BATTLEDGROUND: The Battle Of The Somme was followed, for the Chums, by the battles of Vimy Ridge, the Scarpe and Arras. things were going well for groups of prisoners began to pass through on their way back to the rear.”

The first line had advanced behind a creeping barrage which had been both effective and accurate. This time there had been a proper co-ordination and the Germans had not had the chance to regain their machine gun posts.

At 12.16 precisely, the Chums streamed over the top led by Major John Kennington but with very little support to their flanks. Through cloud, drizzle and snow they pressed on to the positions taking by the first troops, and through them,

headed for the German reserve trenches.

“Off we went shouting and cheering,” wrote Spence, “til we fell into Fritz’s first trench. I took the chance to light up. Had no fags. Nobody had.

We’d smoked the issue in the waiting trench.”

Again the artillery barrage was invaluable save for one gun which firing short, inflicted some casualties “on our own men until we adjusted ourselves to its defect”.

“We halted in the rushes to wait for the barrage to creep some more. But as the artillery were firing short there were fewer pals. Some just rolled over, some tried to crawl away, while frantic

messages were being sent back to lengthen the range.”

The absence of support worried some of the officers who hesitated until chivied by Kennington. The 15th Royal Scots, for instance, was only at company strength. But even with flanks dangerously bare this was no time for holding back.

Watching them, Colonel Clark remarked to the adjutant Capt Emerson: “We shall never see them again.” Fortunately he was wrong.

The men were in fact not perturbed. They advanced “laughing and talking and smoking cigarettes” and even when held up by uncut wire

and sniped – even fired at pointblank by a lone German field gun – carried on confident that the day was theirs.

It was Kennington’s turn for the ‘miraculous escape’. A bullet penetrated his steel helmet, grazed his head, and went out the other side leaving him dazed for the next two hours. But his leadership on that most memorable day won him the Military Cross. ● Continued tomorrow and read each week’s chapters as an online e-book, uploaded at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

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Grimsby Telegraph Thursday, July 31, 2014

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First World War - centenary commemorations: Grimsby’s Own –

An uneasy quiet fell over the bloodstained battlefield as the Chums withdrew SGT GHUZNEE GEORGE TRUE: Awarded the Military Medal in 1917. Later Captain, 17th West Riding Home Guard 1941.

LIEUT CLAYTON BRANFOOT: Killed in action August 1917.

AT THE uncut wire the Battalion lay down and parties went forward to cut routes through the obstacle. Then they stormed forward again and took the enemy line, 1,500 yards away from their starting point.

Sgt Spence was held up by the wire. “Then the wire, lovely Jerry special, 20 yards thick and uncut. We got through in twos and threes with Jerry sniping at us. A ricochet clouted me on the thumb holding my rifle strap and in the same split second the chap on my left fell with the same bullet in his lung. It took three field dressings to cover the hole in him.”

But this was to be no repeat of the Somme, no debacle, no disaster.

There were, of course, casualties. Lieut Dent had been hit during the gas attack at the start line and Lieut Procter, at the head of his No 5 Platoon in ‘B’ Company, apparently leading his men with “extraordinary nonchalance” was wounded. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

The citation described the situation before the uncut wire as Jack Procter “walked up and down as his men took cover, making jokes, imitating Charlie Chaplin and keeping the men laughing as gaps in the wire were cut”.

“Although wounded he continued to display the utmost sang froid.”

Poor Lieut Willard Cocks, leading ‘B’ Company, was not so fortunate, his wound in the groin proving fatal. He died within 15 minutes, propped up, attempting to smoke his pipe, refusing help and waving 2nd Lieut HJ Lodge forward when he came to his assistance.

Nevertheless, between 2pm and 2.30 the lines of the enemy trenches were taken and the Chums had dug a new trench for themselves beyond it and consolidated. By nightfall on that happy day, they were secure and basking in the glow of success and a task not merely accomplished but well executed.

Sgt Spence was delighted with the prospect. “Hundreds of Jerries beating it like hell back to our own rear lines.”

They also basked in another glow, the acquisition of loot.

Apart from spoils so large they could do little with them – eight field guns and two naval guns from which the sights and breach blocks were removed – the Chums rejoiced in their finds ... Zeiss binoculars, pickelhaube helmets, Mauser pistols.

“Our fellows are still laughing about the hasty manner in which the Hun scooted to the rear, presumably not according to plan. Jerry had thoughtfully lighted fires in his dig-outs and left his rations, including cigars, untouched. Even parcels and letters were unopened. One of our stretcher bearers – all of whom did excellent work – on opening a parcel, found it contained a big red sausage and some eggs. He cracked one and found it was hard boiled. After this discovery they were an accomplished fact.

“It is amusing to see our fellows, who have got their tails right up, standing on top of the trench, throwing a chest smoking big German cigars and summing up the situation in their usual terse manner.”

Not least among the ‘usual experiences’ for the Chums – indeed for many British soldiers – was being in a position on the Point du Jour Ridge to overlook the distant Germans and the whole panorama of the plain of Douai in front of them.

“Our new line is on the forward slopes of the Vimy Ridge.

This is a new experience. Instead of being overlooked we are looking down on the Hun. We overlook Oppy and Gavrelles, both places appear to be practically untouched by shell fire,” wrote a Chums officer.

“We didn’t half shift the Boche some,” wrote home 2nd Lieut J Irvine Taylor. “From our outpost line there was a magnificent view between two sweet little villages. Truly it was a glimpse of the promised land, real green and wooded countryside, so peaceful after the manmade desert country we had crossed, a real oasis.

“We collared 11 guns. You can’t imagine the feeling one experiences when capturing the guns which for weeks past have been laying out your men.”

But now the weather proved an intractable enemy. Thigh deep in mud and water, several men died from exposure.

“All night it rained and blew and snowed,” wrote Tom Spence. “But there wasn’t a Jerry for six miles to fire on.”

Sixty more of the Chums were taken to hospital suffering from exposure and exhaustion adding to the tally of two

We continue the serialisation of Grimsby’s Own: The Story Of The Chums, by Peter Chapman. Today, Chapter 3: The Homecoming officers killed, five wounded and 150 ORs killed, missing or wounded before, on April 14, the Chums left the battlefield behind for quieter billets at Mazieres.

It had been – for a most welcome change – an occasion to celebrate.

The Brigadier wrote to all units “to convey to all ranks under your command his high appreciation of the valour and determination displayed by those who carried out the attack on April 9 and who underwent the still higher ordeal of holding the captured trenches and gaining ground during six days without shelter of any sort under mid-winter conditions.”

And in the snow a cavalry officer appeared to survey the guns the Chums had captured and to assess his chances of bringing up teams of horses to remove them.

It had been, in no small part thanks to the Chums, the most successful day of the war to date on the Western Front.

Generals wrote home too. In a letter to his wife, Allenby told her: “I had really a very big success yesterday, gained a lot of ground and taken a great many prisoners. I won all along the line. The operations worked like clockwork, not a hitch anywhere. This battle is not over ...”

But what was to follow this feat of arms was described succinctly by one of the Chums as “the fiasco at the Chemical Works at Roeux”.

After a period out of the line, the Chums were once again involved in a continuation of the Arras offensive, this time in an attack on Roeux.

The town of Roeux and the chemical works that marked it out from other towns, had been attacked time and time again by a number of units but without success.

Unlike the Chums’ last battle ground, the prospect was not one of open countryside but of ruined buildings and buildings most heavily and importantly defended by a fully alert enemy.

All through April, other divisions, notably the 51 Highland, had thrown themselves at this strongpoint in the Arras battle lines and to no avail. Other points had fallen. But not Roeux and not the ruinous chemical works.

Assault after assault had been repulsed with enormous loss.

Roeux held out.

But Allenby decided that as the objective remained so the battle for it should continue.

The Chums were in the front line when their 34th Division and the 37th Division were committed to the battle.

Late on the night of April 24, the Chums, the Suffolks and the 16th Royal Scots were involved in their first fighting before Roeux, fighting bravely, losing heavily. It was a prelude for what was to come.

The attack proper took place on April 28.

It had been decided to vary routine, to attack before dawn. By 4am, with the Royal Scots on their right and the Suffolks on their left, the Chums were assembled in the start line trenches.

The Royal Scots had been told to take Roeux itself, the Suffolks the chemical works and the Chums detailed to occupy the cemetery, central in the landscape.

The attack was doomed from the start. At 4.15, imagining that darkness would hide them, the Chums under the command of Major Vignoles (Col Clark was on sick leave) left their trenches and formed up in the open.

But the Germans heard them doing so and immediately opened fire with trench mortars, machine guns and field guns.

Ten minutes later, and already shaken, they set off but came under intense fire. Men began to fall and it was realised that the Germans occupied all the buildings ahead of them and near the cemetery.

Dawn broke slowly and darkly and at 5.15 the Chums had fragmented into scattered parties, an officer here with a handful of men, a lance corporal there with another group, a pocket in half dug trench, groups in shell holes, all pinned down, all under heavy fire.

Capt Frederick Worthington, Commanding ‘B’ Company and

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Grimsby Telegraph Thursday, July 31, 2014

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The Story Of The Chums

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now with 20 men, was near a railway line when the Germans left their positions and surrounded them. They were almost all shot, the remainder taken prisoner and Worthington killed by shellfire.

Lance Corporal Riggall, with his Lewis gun, also had a small party and carried out covering fire for others of the Battalion now slipping back.

The Chums, broken up into penny packets of desperate men, now fought as best they could, independent groups, extricating themselves from what appeared to be a catastrophe.

Thirty men, surrounded, surrendered.

Soon after 8am, the Germans advanced in six waves from dead ground near Roeux, their progress covered by heavy machine gun and artillery fire. The Chums fought well although frenziedly and, as possible, began to filter back.

Although the German attacks were impeded and although a few Germans were actually captured, the day was theirs.

The Chums’ losses were overwhelming. In addition to Capt Worthington, 2nd Lieut Irvine Taylor (commanding ‘C’ Company) and Lieut Harry Hendin (commanding ‘D’ Company – and the man who, it will be remembered, had got so far forward on the Somme that previous year) and four other officers were dead.

Irvine Taylor, a clergyman’s son, died without knowing that he had been awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry and leadership in the successful attack on the 9th.

And of the Chums 420 were dead, wounded or missing. One of the ‘missing’ was Cpl Harry Ellis, who with shell splinters in his back, was left for dead on the battlefield and lay there for three days before being found by the Germans and taken into a long captivity.

But in hospital at Hammelburg he discovered to his delight that the German doctor attending to him was a frequent – and enthusiastic – peace-time visitor not only to England but to Grimsby specifically where he invariably stayed at the Royal Hotel.

Ellis was treated as something of an honoured guest and made a complete recovery.

And Jack Biggs, who sat on the Mills bombs with such explosive effect, also survived. He lost a leg but earned a living in London after the war where he became an accomplished artist.

The fighting, however disastrous, was a milestone in the lives of Sgt GG True, Sgt George Parker, L/Cpl Harry Riggall and Ptes E Hart and Bill Robinson, all of whom were awarded the Military Medal.

An uneasy quiet fell over the bloodstained battlefield and on April 30 the shattered battalion was withdrawn from the line.

This tragedy marked the culmination of the Chums’ involvement in the fighting around Arras and was a watershed in their history.

Although after the Somme it could be said that the unit was never the same again, after Roeux and its terrible casualties it was certainly not the same, much of the original Grimsby ‘family atmosphere’ having perished.

May and June 1917 found the Chums on the Arras front, not

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BATTLE OF ARRAS 1917: Scaling ladders fixed in frontline trenches during April 8, 1917, the day prior to the opening of the Arras offensive.

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far from Peronne, their brigade holding the line between the PTE LIONEL ATKINSON (LATER MAJOR, MBE, MM, TD): Won the Military Medal at villages of Hargicourt and Villeret.

In August, and in order to obtain a good view of the new Hargicourt.

Hindenburg Line – to which the Germans had withdrawn earlier that year – the Chums went into action once again.

MAJOR GENERAL EC During the early morning of August 25 and in complete INGOUVILLE silence, they formed up for a dawn attack. Their now familiar WILLIAMS CB, DSO, friends the Suffolks and the Royal Scots were with them when, GOC 34 DIVISION: after a brief and stunning artillery barrage, they took the Killed near Mametz, Germans completely by surprise.

July 22, 1916.

Almost unbelievably there was no wire to impede their approach and, suffering few casualties, they either took prisoner or shot every German they came across. The German counter-attack on the following day was snuffed out and that night the Chums, once again happy men, were withdrawn.

The raid had not been without loss. Few were. Three officers and 32 soldiers had been killed and another 188 wounded.

Particularly sad was the death of 2nd Lieut Clayton Branfoot.

At 39, a rather elderly subaltern, the bachelor, one-time languages master at he Municipal College had been with the unit from the start.

He had spent a year at Kiel, another in Berlin and two in Paris and had won the sobriquet ‘Kesker’ (Qu’est ce que). A handsome and cosmopolitan man his loss to the battalion where his skills as interpreter and interrogator of prisoners had been invaluable, was great.

Col Clark wrote to his parents: “I regret to say he was killed while out in front of our trenches making preparations for the attack next morning.”

Once again the Battalion was withdrawn, moving first North and then to the Ypres Salient, thence to Elverdinghe where they were put to work mending roads, a menial and hazardous business under constant fire. Seven men were killed and a further 18 wounded during this unglamorous episode.

In October, the Chums were involved in operations near Langemarck, part of the horrific battles for the Passchendaele Ridge, one memorable occasion standing out when ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies attacked, led by Capt Charles Emerson, bringing further praise and credit to the unit and winning their youthful leader one of his two Military Crosses.

Since the death of General Ingouville Williams, the 34th Division had been commanded by a highly regarded Yorkshire infantryman, Brig Gen Sir Cecil Lothian Nicholson, an experienced and capable man who thought very highly of the several Service Battalions which constituted his brigades and who was, in the event, to be the Chums’ last arbiter in their swansong on the battlefield of France and Flanders.

An ominous winter began to close in once again, its prospects not enhanced by the collapse into revolution of Russia, thus bringing an ever increasing fear that the reinforced Germans, at last fighting a war on but one front, would make a final bid for victory over their now weary French and British opponents on the Western Front. ● Continued tomorrow and read each week’s chapters as an online e-book, uploaded at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

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Grimsby Telegraph Friday, August 1, 2014

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First World War - centenary commemorations: Grimsby’s Own –

A fitting and characteristic swansong for the Chums as the end of the battalion nears THE Chums spent October, November and December 1917 in rest areas, in training camps – where a trickle of recruits were absorbed into the elastic ranks – and in sections of the front line deemed “quiet”.

MAJOR GENERAL SIR LOTHIAN NICHOLSON, KCB, CMG: Wearing the Chequered Board brassard of the 34th Division of which he was the second and last GOC Colonel East Lancashire Regiment 1920 to 1932. He died in March 1933.

SGT (LATER MAJOR) ALBERT COX: Picture in December 1917. After the Somme, he was commissioned and posted to Archangel with the North Russian Expeditionary Force with which he was to serve until 1919.

In February 1918, Colonel Clark handed over command to Colonel AW Blockley.

And it was under his superb leadership that the Chums entered upon the last phase of their existence and the last battles they were to fight.

As March progressed, so the tension on both sides of No Man’s land mounted. It was clear to the Allies that the spring of 1918 would produce the long-awaited German attack and, on March 18, two German soldiers deserted to reveal that the date of this great surge was to be March 21.

With the exception of July 1, 1916, the date March 21, 1918, is the most celebrated and memorable specific day of the 1914-18 War, the day on which Ludendorf rang up the curtains on the massive German assault with which he intended to end the war in his favour.

On a 54-mile front, but principally upon that facing Gen Sir Hubert Gough’s under-strength Fifth Army, the Germans, inestimably aided by fog and mist, unleashed their attack.

The Chums, however, were with the 103rd Brigade in Byng’s neighbouring Third Army and in old trenches near Boiry-Becquerelle. After an intense shelling they were immediately in the most perilous trouble, the regiment coming under fire from infiltrating German troops, shot at from front, flank and rear, holding on by the skin of their teeth until ordered to fall back.

We continue the serialisation of Grimsby’s Own: The Story Of The Chums, by Peter Chapman. Today, Chapter 3: The Homecoming ...

The fight was indeed desperate. One Company, engaged at close range all day, lost two of its Lewis guns which simply overheated and blew up. It was entirely due to the skill of Col Blockley that the Chums extricated themselves at all as units to their right and left began to disintegrate and fall back.

“Isolated as my Battalion was on the crest of a hill and with night coming on and the enemy known to have a free passage round both my flanks, I deemed it wise to prepare for a withdrawal, the alternative being the probable cutting off and surrounding of the whole battalion.”

At 4.30 that afternoon the order to retreat was given. Incredibly casualties were again slight, just one officer and 15 men killed and 170 wounded. But the battalion lived to fight another day and was withdrawn to Hamlincourt.

In what was considered to be a move to a quiet area, the 34th Division was sent to the Armentieres district.

But they had an unfortunate near neighbour in the line – the 2nd Portuguese Division near Neuve Chapelle to their South – troops upon which, on April 9 (and after a ferocious barrage), the Germans launched an extremely determined attack.

The effect of it, as the dispirited Portuguese broke and fled, was like rolling

back the lid of a sardine tin. To their North, the Chums were forced to wheel back upon themselves and to avoid being taken in the flank.

Between the 9th and the 18th, therefore, in the triangle formed by Armentieres, Estaires and Bailleul took place the confused, desperate, determined – but final – battles in which the Chums were to take part.

It was, at last, a war transformed, a war in the open, a series of fights and raids, battles of movement, albeit generally movement in the wrong direction, and a series in which the excellence of command both on the part of General Nicholson and, in particular, by Col Blockley who, unaccountably, was not decorated for his vigorous efforts, was ultimately responsible for success.

During these hectic days the Chums fended off innumerable attempts by the enemy to exploit their success against the Portuguese, forever throwing up stout defences and manoeuvring (a manner to which they were certainly not accustomed or schooled) to hold at least the semblance of a defensive line.

Retreat and stand, retreat and fight were the endless orders of the nine days that were, corporately, the Battle Of The Lys. It was a fight with what was to hand, reinforcements like the 97 lads, all 19 years old, who, completely new to the front, were handed over to ‘B’ Company on April 10 and who, to a man, “behaved splendidly” in the CO’s words.

In an area of small villages, criss crossed by the main Armentieres railway line – which figured large in the main events, the Chums fought and yielded, dug in and counter attacked, back-

FINAL DAYS: Possibly the last photograph of the remains of the Battalion, at Haudicourt, December 17, 1918. Six men, with RSM Jack Jolly, third left, and a young officer, pose in front of the old Lincolns’ badge similar to that at Sutton Veny.

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The Story Of The Chums

Grimsby Telegraph Friday, August 1, 2014

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WITHDRAWN: The Chums in late 1918, withdrawn from the line to become a Training Cadre, principally for the eager American latecomers. begun.

Major Vignoles, promoted Lieutenant Colonel, had left the Battalion in November 1917 to take command of the 9th Northumberland Fusiliers, winning a bar to his DSO in April 1918.

Major Kennington had left the Chums after leading them to success at Hargicourt, to become the second in command of the 1/3rd London Regiment and, promoted Lieutenant Colonel, to the command of the 1st Battalion the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, a regular army unit which he led with conspicuous bravery and was awarded the DSO in August 1918.

Major Emmerson, for long the Chums’ adjutant, joined another battalion of the Lincolns and won a bar to the MC he had been awarded at Langemarck.

Many soldiers had left too, among them Pte Albert Cox, one of the original volunteers from the Municipal College, who, after the Somme, was commissioned and whose service was extended when he was posted to Archangel with the North Russian Expeditionary Force with which he was to serve until 1919.

Lionel Atkinson, who had the Chums’ number 7 and had won the military Medal at Hargicourt, was commissioned in 1918.

Jack Oldroyd too, whose brother had been killed on the Somme, had left the Battalion after being wounded at Arras, and was also commissioned in May 1918, and became a Captain in the 2/25th Punjabis, serving on the North West Frontier of India and in Waziristan during the Third Afghan War of 1919.

His story was that of many others In all the Chums provided 267 officers who went on to serve in other units.

The battalion now broke up swiftly.

The first American troops began to

arrive in France in May and, on the 18th of the month, 12 officers and 140 men of the Chums were detailed to form a training cadre in order to show the newcomers the ropes.

The more fortunate 400 men and six officers left and returned home their duty done. Even before they broke up and anticipating the event, a collection was organised in the event of a memorial to the fallen being raised in the town.

A cheque for £100 was handed over to Col Blockley who duly forwarded it to the Mayor of Grimsby, Ald Moss.

That July – and despite the fact that the war continued unabated, in France – the first memorial service was held in the parish church.

A large congregation, among them Bennett, Vignoles, Stream and a large number of men so lately soldiers, heard the Vicar of Grimsby, Canon AA Markham, begin his service with a timely reminder of the town’s contribution to the war.

“When all the details are published, Grimsby will have more reason then ever now she knows of, to be proud of the battalion that bore her name.”

It was two years to the night that the Chums had braced themselves for the horror of the first day of the Somme on the morrow.

“Those are the men we remember tonight with pride and gratitude. They were the pick of our town. Freely and promptly they answered the call that rang out in those early days – Your King and Country want you.”

When the war was over, there should be a permanent memorial to them.

But for the time being, with the war going on, “we must all be very careful, those who are at home, never to talk about ending the war until the only end

has been attained. We must carry on the task for which they have died.”

Back in France the cadre of Chums dwindled with the passing months and although denied a position in the line in the final and victorious battles that were to end the war, they continued, by training the Americans, to the eventual outcome.

A few lingered even after the November 11, 1918 Armistice, among them their last RSM, Jack Jolly, whose efforts in the debacle at the Roeux Chemical works had been rewarded with the Meritorious Service Medal.

In January 1919, all were sent home save for two officers and a handful of men and on June 8 that year, the last eight of what had been the 10th (Service) Battalion, Lincolnshire regiment (Grimsby) packed their kit bags and came home.

It is impossible now – as it was impossible in 1919 – to say just how many men served in the Chums and how many of their number were killed in action or died as a consequence of their wounds.

For the unit was constantly reinforced and endlessly diminished, swelling and declining with the fortunes of battle.

Men joined the Chums from other units and left it for other units and many of them too were casualties.

Major General CR Simpson’s History of the Lincolnshire regiment 1914-18 (Medici Society 1931) lists 786.

Other ranks were killed, to which figures must be added to the number of officers who also died.

But the actual total is probably considerably higher. ● Continued tomorrow and read each week’s chapters as an online e-book, uploaded at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

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ing up each other’s Companies and indeed other units and, inevitably, losing heavily.

On April 15, and two miles away from their old trenches, the Chums dug in near Haegedoorne in yet another attempt to halt the relentless flow of the Germans. The following afternoon they were again attacked, suffering heavily from direct hits from artillery fire, an unpleasant experience which was to be repeated the following day.

But the Chums held their line despite all that was thrown at them and the Germans were finally repulsed with heavy loss.

It was a fitting and characteristic swansong to the battlefield.

The Regimental History recalls that “at 4am on April 18, the worn-out 10th Lincolnshire were relieved and moved back to the Croix de Poperinghe line and dug a new line in the rear. The Battalion was not again engaged in the fighting on the Lys. But it had most worthily upheld the great traditions of the Lincolnshire Regiment”.

So great a toll had been taken of the Chums – and indeed of other battalions of the regiment – that it was decided they should cease to exist as a separate unit and that survivors would be drafted to other battalions still in the line.

On May 5, 1918, the 4th and the 2/5th Battalions were sent to the rear, reduced to the role of training units.

And on May 11 at 8am, the Chums received their orders to follow suit and disband.

It was the break up too of their brigade.

And when the East Lancs marched off, their band struck up Auld Lang Syne as they passed the Chums’ lines.

The process of break-up and disbandment might be said to have already

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Grimsby Telegraph Saturday, August 2, 2014

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First World War - centenary commemorations: Grimsby’s Own –

Years passed but the bond that tied them would never be broken ON SUNDAY, July 6, 1919, the Chums’ Colours were formally handed over the Vicar of Grimsby for safe custody in St James’ Church.

LT COL LORD HENEAGE: In his later years. A dedicated attendee of the Chums reunions.

CPL GEORGE SPEIGHT, MM: Stretcher bearer, severely wounded August 27, 1917. Died May 1933, aged 36.

PTE JACK PEART: Wounded 1916, 1917, nine months a PoW, who nursed Speight in his last days.

There was a parade from Town Hall to church in which representatives of the town’s many organisations took part. But all eyes were on the Chums, in civilian clothes now, but “with their wound stripes, service ribbons and infirmities”, a large number of them, marching once again, the Colour Party under Vignoles’ command.

“I accept these Colours,” said Canon Markham, “which you have brought here today. We are glad to think they will hang upon the walls of this old church for they will speak a wonderful message to all who see them for all time to come.

“They will tell of young men who, with fearless, willing enthusiasm offered themselves in the early days of the war, awaiting no summons and brooking no delay, who rushed into the ranks because their King and country wanted them.

“They will tell the story of men who made haste to give all they could and who offered, when the time came, very gallant service and sacrifice. We accept with pride the custody of these Colours.”

It was a straightforward, solemn and necessary occasion; after it, the Chums marched away and into their own history, back to the Town Hall and thence to the Doughty Road drill hall where they had all enlisted five long years before.

In 1914, they had been men with an uncertain future. Now, back in the community to which they belonged, their past, with all its horrors, had welded them into a league of private remembrance, the bond of experience beyond sharing with those who knew nothing of the trenches of the Western Front.

Old soldiers – and in the main the Chums were still all in their twenties – are reluctant to break such strongly forged links.

Thus they determined never to allow the future to dissolve the past and, on November 22, met for dinner for the first time, Old Comrades all, united by ties beyond the comprehension of other men.

They were to do so each year for as long as they were able.

At that first dinner, a veneer – a disguise maybe – of levity cloaked the so recent past.

Sgt Spence, who it may be remembered had had fun with the rum rations back in 1917, produced an amusing menu-keepsake, written in hearty Chaucerian prose, to enliven what was never a morose or mawkish occasion.

But even through the fun, the truth showed. “It is a gift to ye men of the 10th and yea of ye 11th to make merry. But to those who have fought not with them, it shall be even as Arabic.”

Indeed.

The tenor of these occasions was maintained until about 1925 – the year that General Lord Rawlinson died. That year Spence, no doubt after consultation, felt the dinner ‘programme’ could carry actual reminiscence, actual photographs of fallen comrades and actual reference to the four years of ‘their’ war.

With gratitude Colonel Heneage – who following the death of his father in 1922 had become Lord Heneage – had accepted the Chums’ Association’s presidency, with Colonel Cordeaux the vice-president, Col Kennington the treasurer and Albert Cox, his Russian experience behind him, the

We conclude the serialisation of Grimsby’s Own: The Story Of The Chums, by Peter Chapman. secretaryship which he was to hold all his long life.

And on the committee were all the old familiar faces from the past ... Emerson, Vignoles, Cheffings, Oldroyd, Baldwin, Spence, Forrest ... old faces, old friends, old Chums.

Memorials to their endeavours appeared in the town, one at he Municipal College and others in chapels and churches.

But in 1923 two memorials to the 34th Division, one at La Boiselle and the other at Mont Noir near Armentieres (both designed by the eminent Leicestershire architect Robert Jackson Emerson) were unveiled.

Whether or not five years was too soon to return to the scene of such dreadful events, five of the Chums, including Tom Spence, decided to make the journey.

With them on the boat to France was General Sir Lothian Nicholson and General Ingouville Williams’ widow and her daughter, Aileen.

It was a novelty for civilians so lately soldiers to meet their Divisional Commander. Because of the general postwar situation, the general asked solicitously whether they had all found jobs and, gathering confidence, ex-Private Harry Thompson decided “to ask the dear old buffer to have a drink”.

General Nicholson, wedged in a deck-chair, declined, “I would with the greatest of pleasure dear boy, but if I move an inch from the deck-chair I shall be seasick.”

On August 23 they arrived at Albert and the memories began to flood back. And then to La Boiselle, in the process of being rebuilt, and on to that enormous crater and to Sausage Valley.

And then the memorial loomed into view.

“The sun half sheltering behind a cloud, spot-lights the scene, illuminating the shining shoulders of the statue,” wrote Tom Spence.

Whether his nerve failed him or not General Nicholson (who was supposed to unveil his Division’s memorial) suddenly declined at the last minute and General Pulteney stepped forward. There were words of praise, tributes to the dead. The chaplain began his prayers.

PTE FRANK ROLAND (DUSTY) MILLER: Died in 1980.

“We hear only a few words occasionally,” admitted Spence. “Eyes are misty, ears are hearkening again on those sounds which smote them on July 1, 1916.

“We look on the ground for comfort and see only every foot of land marked by embedded shrapnel, bullets, fragments of shells and clips of small arms, ammunition, and this after several seasons of cultivation.”

The local Mayor was asked to say a few words but was overcome with emotion.

Young children came forward to put their flowers at the memorial’s base.

And then it was over. Spence wrote: “We’ve nothing to say. What are words? We have paid our last tribute.”

Then they went to look into the depths of the crater, a hole so large and so deep it would take the entire Grimsby Town Hall, a hole so big it had never been filled in.

“How well do we recall the glee with which we saw the mine go up and how easy we thought our task would be,” Spence pondered.

They pressed on, all of them, to Mont Noir and to the other replica, 34th Division Memorial. General Nicholson was now visibly affected by the strain of events and reminiscence. Bravely he struggled through an account of his division’s battles, reeling off the name so recently familiar.

It was, he said, the 34th which finally stopped the German advance in 1918. “To use a naval expression,” he concluded, “the 34th was a happy ship.”

General Nicholson, whose son had been killed during the fighting, was held in genuinely high esteem by all the troops under his command (not a common fate for 1914-18 War general officers), not least for the East Lancs battalions of which regiments he had once been a member and of which he became their post-war Colonel.

He died, aged 68, in 1933.

The following year – the tenth anniversary of the Somme offensive – another party left Grimsby for France.

Vignoles was in charge and members of ‘D’ Company – which had always been nicknamed J Battery (no doubt because of Vignoles’ former association with the Victoria Street volunteer gunners) – was well represented.

After visiting La Boiselle and spending seven days touring old haunts, the party set off for home in an ageing char-a-banc.

But the vehicle broke down.

Night was falling and the veterans were miles from anywhere.

Suddenly, and in adversity however mild, there was a spontaneous rekindling of the old spirit. Vignoles told Sgt Tom Spence to fall the men in and, in column of fours and singing the ruder songs of Kitchener’s vanished armies, they marched for half an hour until a village was reached.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est” shouted une vieille from a bedroom window as the tramp of marching feet woke her from her slumbers?

“Encore la guerre madame,” came the reply from the ranks.

Of battles lost and battles won, of remembrance of those dead and gratitude for being spared, was the burden carried at every Chums dinner in the inter-war years.

Light was made of the bad news as the Grim reaper took his relentless toll as the effects and wounds of war made their delayed claims. The Chums were not

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Grimsby Telegraph Saturday, August 2, 2014

The Story Of The Chums

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Battle honours Somme 1916. Albert.

Pozieres Ridge.

Ypres 1917.

Poelcapelle. Arras 1917.

First Battle Of The Scarpe.

Arleaux. Lys 1918.

St Quentin. Bailleul.

Estaires.

Kemmel Ridge.

DWINDLING: One of the last occasions, in 1976, on which the survivors met. From left, Tom Bellamy, Charles H Emerson, John Sandall, Bill Robinson, Albert W Cox, the then Rector of Grimsby the Reverend Geoffrey Brown, Dick Cammack, Charlie Genders, Lionel Atkinson, Frank Miller and Laurie Johnson. over-moved by death.

But they did what they could for their own.

George Speight, for instance, was one of the Wakefield 150, a first class and popular man who, as a Lance Corporal stretcher bearer, had been awarded the MM for his gallantry on that memorable day at Hargicourt.

He had been terribly wounded and was not discharged from hospital until long after the war had ended.

Nonetheless he threw himself into work for his onetime comrades becoming a secretary of the Wakefield Chums association, the president of which, incidentally was that Charlie Chaplin of the battlefield, Jack Procter.

Speight wore himself out. But knowing of his eventful plights, the Chums rallied and Jack Peart had him to stay for as long as he liked, in the clean atmosphere of his seaside home at Humberstone.

Peart and another Chum, “Bluey” Little, devoted themselves to Speight, nursing him and feeding him on fresh eggs, fish and the best they could afford.

It was to no avail, Speight lasted three weeks, before he died. But he died among Chums.

Major Pratte died in 1922 and Sgt George Hobson in 1929. Hobson, whose pre-war intention was to become ordained, had resumed his course in 1919. When he became a priest he served first in the East End of London but later went to Africa as a missionary and died there.

Each death was heavily felt. So, indeed, were reminders of battles long ago – like the day the Chums heard of the re-appearance of Roland Marsden, a ‘C’ Company man and another of the Wakefield contingent, who was killed on the Somme.

One day in September 1937, a farmer in France came across Marsden’s remains, identified by his identity disc. He was at last given a decent burial with his old Chums in the cemetery at La Boiselle.

But each death was somehow leavened by the good news. For life went on.

In July 1928, the Prince of Wales – the only member of the Royal family ever to be decorated for gallantry – visited Grimsby and, with Colonel Cordeaux at their head, the Chums turned out to provide a welcome, an event the Prince appreciated and with which he could relate.

It was also no surprise that with the passing of the years, men who had been Chums achieved positions of some importance both within and

outside their community.

One of ‘C’ Company’s old Officers, LR Taylor, who had been severely wounded at Arras, became headmaster of Edward Street School. Col Vignoles left the town for London to be Director of the British Electrical Development Association. Alderman Tate received the Freedom of the Borough he had served in so many ways.

Colonel Kennington became head of the Grimsby Gas Company.

Albert Cox began his long and distinguished career in local government culminating in his being made a Freeman of Cleethorpes, his home town.

The Chums prospered, in business and in civic life and went their several ways. But the bond, that common ground, endured.

When war broke out again in 1939, those who were able were the first to volunteer once again, older now, but no less willing. They served with distinction in far flung corners of the earth, from Norway to Mauritius, and served with distinction and honour.

Another war over and the years of austerity begun, the survivors, many of them returned from foreign part, resumed their meetings, the first in the Criterion Cafe in the Borough of Cleethorpes, on March 29, 1946, to celebrate the appointment as Mayor of the resort of their secretary, Albert Cox. They all came, as many as could, 75 of them, all veterans now, and as a token of their esteem for Cox gave him a splendid keepsake, a parchment bond book which they all signed.

Col Kennington, Lord Heneage, G H Cheffings, Jack Oldroyd, Charles Emerson, Tom Spence, were all there and all signed.

There too were Bacon and Cook,

Sydney Thompson, Enderby, Tom Ross, Baumber, Bluey Little, Brammer, Tidder, Tom Borman, Dixon, Lionel Atkinson, John Normandale, Jack Peart, Sandall, survivors all and happy to be so.

Colonel Cordeaux died that year.

Gradually they just slipped away.

Vignoles died in 1953 and Lord Heneage, then 88, the following year.

Tom Spence, chronicler under the pseudonym ECNEPS, who had produced those annual bulletins in the inter-war years – and had lost two sons at sea during the period – had served, commissioned, in 1939. He died after the war, aged 68, advertising manager of the Grimsby News.

There were 90 at the annual dinner in 1956. “It is marvellous how we keep our numbers up,” remarked Colonel Kennington. It was his last dinner for he died the following year, aged 73.

In 1959, they were still turning up, some coming long distances to be present. Capt Dent turned up that year to hear Major Cox comment: “What amazes me is that we can all get together after long absences and still find the spirit of comradeship as strong. We are still as closely knit as when we were a fighting unit.”

Their annual church parades at Brocklesby were a constant source of pleasure to the survivors, the service being held as near to July 1 as possible and Lord Yarborough, maintaining Brocklesby’s links with the battalion, proved an endlessly generous host.

There was special celebration of the Somme’s 50th anniversary and the 60th was marked by special articles in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph and by an exhibition of photographs and documents at the town’s public library.

But by 1978, the years had taken so

NEVER FORGOTTEN: The War Memorial to the Chums in Grimsby Minster.

great a toll that Major Emerson, now the Association’s President, wound up its affairs. Only four had attended the last reunion and barely a dozen were left alive.

That same year, Ernest ‘Dick’ Balderson, was admitted to the Springfield Hospital in Grimsby. He was immensely proud of being a Chum and the highlight of his many years had been their annual reunion which he never failed to attend.

There were only six beds in the ward and in the one opposite was his old CO, Major Emerson.

They died within a week of each other, Balderson, 90, Emerson 88.

The dwindling band of survivors sent wreaths. On Balderson’s short message read: “In memory of one of the best who fought on the Somme, in 1916. From a few remaining Chums.”

Major Cox, who had done as much as any man to foster the spirit of the Chums and had been secretary of their Old Comrades Association for years, also died that year. He was 82.

In 1980, Jack Watson, who had spent 20 months a prisoner of the Germans, Joe Oates the battalion’s PT Instructor, Sgt Ernest Pearson, who’d won the DCM, Frank Dusty Miller, the one-time MO’s orderly, and John Simpson, who, that very year, had discovered pieces of shrapnel in his leg, there undetected for 64 years, all died, all in their 80s.

Harry Helgeson and Bill Robinson, both 84, died in 1981 and Ted Bellamy, who had survived the Somme only to be buried alive three times in subsequent battles, died in 1983, aged 88. ... and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

There is really no need for their epilogue or eulogy. All that needed to be said about the Somme and about

A BOND NEVER BROKEN: A group of old Chums with Lord Yarborough at Brocklesby in the 1950s.

the 1914-18 War as a whole, was said years ago and has been repeated, seemingly endlessly, ever since.

All the kind words that had to be written about the contribution to it by the country’s Pals’ battalions do not require repetition.

To suggest that their efforts were unique would not be correct for, in 1939, exactly the same spirit manifested itself – in Grimsby as elsewhere – although no one would every suggest that their war was comparable to that of 1914-18.

And there is no reason to be believe that in the event of yet another, similar, call to arms there would be any less enthusiasm or diminished patriotism.

But the idea of the Chums, like all Pals battalions, was never repeated.

The terrible effect on the small community, the single parish, of losses on the scale that the Chums, suffered, was never allowed to happen again.

Forming a regiment or battalion-sized unit from just one community was not repeated. In the 1939-45 War men from one locality did not serve in one specific unit but were spread to serve in many and without a particularly geographic bond.

True there were some, notably Territorial Army, units that retained a local flavour.

But civilian volunteers, entirely new to khaki, were not enrolled in unit identical to the Pals Battalions of 20 years before.

As a consequence there are no specifically local Old Comrades, no latter-day Chums.

Commentators on the Great War speak of the lost generation which perished, apparently pointlessly, in the mud of France and Flanders.

With their loss (which was not pointless) the nation was the less in the post-war year.

In microcosm, Grimsby was the less too.

Those who survived naturally rose to positions of leadership within their community.

They did so because they were the town’s best and bravest and most generous.

It is to be hoped that Grimsby never forgets both those who came home with their memories and those who gave their lives in the 10th (Service) Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment (Grimsby).

For the latter it had been indeed a short war. ● See Monday’s Telegraph for coverage of commemorative services to mark the 100th anniversary. Read this book online at www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk