Introduction & Acknowledgements

 

The origins of this manuscript really lie with my grandfather, Walter Nixon.  He died in 1980 when I was eighteen.  A First World War veteran, he had said very little to me about his service with The Royal Garrison Artillery and neither had I prompted him for more detailed information.  He had been gassed and wounded and had been very deaf for many years, the legacy, so the family said, of three years’ service on the guns.  One of his brothers had been killed, another had deserted, after being wounded at Passchendaele as we later found out.  He was a private man and like so many of his generation, did not readily volunteer information about his war service.  After he died, I regretted very much that I hadn’t spoken to him more about his time in the army but somehow I never felt that I should intrude on his past and in any event, his profound deafness made any conversation difficult.  My image of him still is of an old man sitting alone by the fire, rolling his cigarettes and it was that image of this gentle soul and the horrors that he and his generation had endured in France and Flanders many decades earlier, that kindled my interest in the Great War.

 

The year after my grandfather died a small article appeared in The Essex Chronicle about a local man and his wife – Alfred and Frances Wade - who were celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary.  They had married in July 1916 when Alfred had been granted twenty four hours’ leave to tie the knot.  Their love story and the accompanying photo of an elderly couple clinking champagne glasses for the camera made me think of my grandfather and his war service and I determined to contact Alfred Wade to ask him if he would mind telling me a bit more about his time in the army.  He agreed and I spent a very pleasant afternoon with Alfred and his wife as he reminisced about life in the trenches; showing me his medals and two letters of condolence sent to Frances by his officer and his best friend after he had been mistakenly reported as Killed in Action after a trench raid in May 1917.

 

Alfred Wade brought the Great War alive for me and I determined that I would seek out more veterans.  The Essex Chronicle published an appeal for me asking old soldiers to contact me and so, shortly afterwards, while my friends were out socialising and doing the things that teenagers do, I was hopping onto my bicycle armed with a tape recorder and notepad to interview another Great War veteran.

 

One of the people who contacted me as a result of the newspaper appeal was Joe Oliver.  He had fought in the Second World War not the First, but through his involvement with The Burma Star Association and other old comrades’ associations, he offered to put me in touch with a couple of Old Contemptibles.  He also told me of his aunt Edith Oliver who had nursed at a place called Chailey during the First World War.  She had kept an album during her time there and sick and wounded soldiers under her care had left their marks in her book.  Would I like to look at the album?  Well the answer was “Yes please” but in all honesty, as quaint as the album was, I was far more interested in the tangible contact with 1914-18 in the shape of the veterans themselves.  I transcribed a few of the album entries on my portable typewriter, handed the album back to Joe and then set off once more on my bike, following up on the newspaper leads and scouring old people’s homes for Great War survivors.  The album transcript I left in a filing cabinet at home.

 

Many years later and with Great War veterans rapidly thinning out, I came across the transcript again, the entries neatly typed.  They varied in detail, some of the notes just giving a name, a regiment and a number; others including detail on actions fought in, or sentimental verses half remembered.  Corporal F J Denton of the 9th Essex Regiment had included a lot of detail including his home address at Linford near Grays in Essex and the fact that he had been presented with the Military Medal whilst recuperating at the hospital.  As an exercise to see whether I could find out more about the life of this particular soldier, I determined to undertake further research and as part of that process wrote to all the Dentons listed in the phone book covering the Grays area in the hope that one of them might be a relative.  I was lucky; a nephew responded and soon I was corresponding with Corporal Denton’s four children, each of them supplying a little more information about their father.  One of them sent a photo and suddenly, just as the veterans I had met had brought the Great War alive for me, here was Corporal Denton, no longer just a few words scribbled on an album page, but a young man puffing on a cigarette, a wound stripe sewn onto the sleeve of his khaki jacket.

 

I thought again of the original album which had contained Denton’s entry and dug out the address for Joe Oliver to see if I could look at the album again.  Sadly, he had since died, but his son Gerald was quite happy to loan me his great aunt’s keepsake and I set to looking through it with renewed interest.  It was fascinating, containing not only the entries from wounded soldiers but also photographs, line drawings of cap badges, illustrations copied from contemporary postcards or cartoons of the day, and newspaper cuttings which related to activities at the hospitals.  The entries covered virtually the entire war – from Mons in 1914 to the German March offensive in 1918 - although the majority of them are from the first three years.   One of the pasted-in photos showed a group of convalescent soldiers and there, sitting at the front, his Essex Regiment cap badge and corporal’s stripes clearly visible and with the ribbon of the Military Medal sewn on to his hospital blues, was Corporal Denton.  I had a negative made of the photo and then had further prints made which I sent it to his children.

 

By now, I was keen to repeat my success with Denton and to find out more about the other soldiers.  So began a decade of intermittent research, fitted in between a busy career and family life, whenever time allowed.  And as I gathered more and more information it occurred to me that here, in this album was the Great War in microcosm.  Here were the soldiers with their talk of Loos and Ypres, Gallipoli and The Somme, while back in England was the local community which nursed and supported them, all the while the villagers undergoing their own trials and tribulations as more and more men joined up to serve King and Country. Forty-nine of those men would eventually have their names inscribed on the village war memorial (and I have since identified a further eleven men who could equally lay claim to commemoration on it as well).

 

Chailey, as I soon discovered, was in Sussex, but the whole album was rather like a jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing.  There were references to places called Hickwells and Beechlands and it wasn’t until some while later that I realised that they were the names of separate hospitals where Nurse Oliver had worked.  I visited Chailey and discovered that the two buildings still existed; both returned to private residences and in the case of Beechland House, converted into several large homes.

 

As my research progressed, I visited the National Newspaper Library at Colindale in North London, scouring through old copies of the local papers and uncovering information about Chailey in 1914-18 and the work of the British Red Cross Society there.

 

This then, is the story of a small village community in what is now West Sussex, during the Great War; a community driven by the love of its country and a sense of ‘doing the right thing’ and a community which provided a welcome respite for the wounded men in its charge, from the horrors of trench warfare.

 

Researching the names in the album really has been a labour of love and knowing when to call a halt on one soldier and turn attentions towards another has been a necessary lesson which time constraints have forced me to learn.  There are still very many gaps and researching the soldiers has been hindered by the fact that the information they left in Nurse Oliver’s book was never intended by them to be the basis for future research into their war service and personal lives.  They simply left names and numbers, or often just names and regiments, making future extensive research in the latter case, nigh impossible.

 

A full listing of the soldiers whose names appear in Nurse Oliver’s book is included on this website, along with an incomplete roll call of other sick and wounded soldiers who also spent time at Hickwells or Beechlands.  Similarly, I have also included known details of Sussex 54 VAD members and the men from Chailey Parish who enlisted to serve their King and Country.  Should the reader stumble across somebody they think is a relative, or who can add to any of the brief biographies outlined here, I would be delighted to hear from them.  Likewise, people with Chailey connections who think they can shed further light on characters or events from 1914-18 are also encouraged to write.  This narrative is now complete but the research goes on.

 

I have very many people and institutions to thank for the time and assistance they have given me in my quest.

 

My first thanks of course go to the late Joe Oliver and his son Gerald for entrusting their relative’s autograph album to my care.  The pages are tatty and falling apart, many of them are loose or have become detached and some of the fading pencil entries had been overwritten by Joe in his attempts to preserve them.  Nevertheless, the entries never lose their fascination and many of the photos showing unidentified soldiers continue to tantalise.  I am grateful to them both for introducing me to Nurse Oliver and for allowing her to stay at my family home with her patients and her colleagues in Sussex 54 VAD while I tried to find out more about their lives.

 

In Chailey, local resident and Royal British Legion stalwart, Graham Johnson gave me access to research he had conducted into villagers whose names were carved into the village war memorial.  He also provided introductions to Mick Pateman and Reg Philpott, both of whom have lived in the village all their lives and remembered local Great War veterans and were able to shed further light on a number of them.

 

Rob and Anne Tillard of Bineham Gardens provided much insightful information on the Blencowe family in general, and Rob Tillard’s great aunt Fanny Blencowe in particular, loaning me her own Great War photo albums which contained some images duplicated in Nurse Oliver’s album.  Both Rob Tillard and Graham Johnson also conducted me on guided tours of the village, showing me landmarks which played an important part in the life of the villagers and wounded soldiers.

 

Felix and Sally Schade allowed me into their home, Hickwells and were surprised to learn that it had been used as an auxiliary hospital in 1915-16.  I am grateful to them for their hospitality and for providing me with 1946 sale particulars of the house.  Likewise, Kim and Alison Poffley and Viv Vernon, owners of two of the subdivided Beechland apartments, gave me free access to their homes and gardens and I have used some of Emma Poffley’s school project work on her home in this book.

 

Willam Beard, Mr and Mrs A E Brooks and Mr R J Plummer all provided information about Chailey Great War relatives who had lost their lives and Richard Ingram of Umberleigh sent detailed information about the Ingram family, Hickwells and the Ades estate.  Before departing from East Sussex, I would also like to thank Tony Mayes of Newick for his helpful information about Ades and Newick in general and Barrie Barnes for his efforts in trying to locate relatives of Chailey soldiers.

 

Obtaining detailed personal information about the convalescent soldiers has not been easy but the Public Record Office has been the prime source for military information and I have spent more hours than I care to remember pouring through microfilm, microfiche and battalion war diaries.  To the helpful staff there I owe my thanks.

 

Thanks too to Andrew Thornton of Cannock for information on the South Staffordshire Regiment, the author Philip Hoare for information on Netley Military Hospital and the historian Paul Reed for help with The Sussex Regiment and Soldiers Died In The Great War. 

 

The following people all helped me in my searches for individual soldiers.  My uncle, Peter Nixon for finding the grave of Robert Mearns Hobbs, Paul Bennett in Australia for helping with William Barbin, Gerald Cooke with Reginald Pimble, Joe Devereux with Christopher Barclay, Frederick and Geoffrey Denton and their sister Mrs Marjorie Pulfer for providing information on Frederick Denton, also his nephew Eric Denton.  Maurice Harding helped me with information about his grandfather Frederick Harding and Arnie Kay in Canada provided me with the service records of James Bentley, William Bristow, Albert Burnett and Albert Smith.  Iris Martin in the West Midlands and Kathy Compagno in the USA both endeavoured to help me with information on Joseph Spruce.  Chris Baker’s website, The Long, Long Trail has a lively and active forum comprising First World War ‘experts’ and people interested in The Great War from around the world.  Numerous forum members have helped me over the years and I thank them all.  Their names are mentioned on individual biography pages.  Any omissions are entirely incidental and due to forgetfulness on my part. 

 

I have also included extracts from the personal testimonies of some of the Great War veterans – unconnected with Chailey – whom I interviewed in the 1980s.  All of these men are now long dead but their memories were vivid and their company inspiring.  Where their recollections tie in with the events I have described I have felt free to quote them directly and they have my unending admiration and affection.

 

Other institutions which warrant a mention and all of which helped to greater or lesser degrees with the research are Bedfordshire and East Sussex County Record Offices, The Essex Regiment Museum, The National Newspaper Library, The British Red Cross Archives, The Ministry of Defence and The Commonwealth War Graves’ Commission.  The Mid Sussex Times also published a newspaper appeal for information.