As 1914 gave way to 1915, and the BEF clung on in their improvised trenches or behind breastworks where the land was just too waterlogged for trenches to be constructed, it wasn’t just wounded men whose path led them to Chailey, but those on whom the elements had also taken their toll.  There were also men who had fallen sick before they’d even reached France or who had met with accidents while waiting to go abroad. 

 

Alfred Rock fell into the latter category.  Born in Stafford in 1884, Rock fancied himself as a cavalryman and the fact that he was living and working in Douglas, Isle of Man when war was declared proved no bar to his ambitions.  Two months later he’d sailed for England and enlisted with The Household Cavalry. The Royal Horse Guards had arrived in Zeebrugge on the 21st November and by the time Rock had presented himself at the recruiting office in Manchester six days later they were welcoming Kitchener recruits with open arms.  Posted to the cavalry barracks at Regent’s Park, London; Alfred  had barely had time to get used to the routines of cavalry life when he’d fallen down stone steps at the YMCA Headquarters in London whilst off duty and badly fractured his left arm.  Doctors had operated and wired his arm but it had not been a success and by the time he’d reached Hickwells he was still in a lot of pain and with restricted movement.  Twelve months later, the Medical Board at Chelsea found him to be ‘permanently unfit’ and he was discharged from the army.  

 

Photographs taken of convalescent soldiers at Hickwells early in 1915 also bear testimony to the extreme weather endured by the BEF during that first winter in France and Flanders.  Aside from the obvious injuries hinted at by slings and bandages, a number of the men smiling obligingly for the camera have swapped army boots for slippers.  Their feet are swollen and encased within thick woollen socks, and crutches and bath chairs lie beside the benches on which they sit.

 

During December 1914 and January 1915, reinforcements from the United Kingdom brought most of the Expeditionary Force up to full strength again but now the weather would also take its toll.  “January,” states The Official History, “was a month of rain, snow and flood and, although shelling and incessant sniping continued by day, the maintenance and repair of the trenches absorbed most of the attention of the opposing forces.”  In Belgium in particular, the clayey sub-soil held the water two feet or less below the surface with the result that trenches were perpetually flooded.  “Some trenches which could not be pumped out,” continues The Official History, “had to be abandoned; in places the troops occupied only isolated sectors of the fire trenches, dammed at each end and bailed dry… and breastworks sometimes took the place of trenches.  Even then, the men in many parts of the line stood knee-deep in mud and water and had to be relieved twice a day.  There were many sick, and heavy casualties from frozen feet.”

 

An insight into the misery of trench warfare under such conditions is evident in the battalion war diary of The 1st Middlesex Regiment.  On January 2nd, having left billets west of Armentieres, the battalion entered the trenches which were described as “very bad, full of mud and water up to the men’s knees in many places.”  On the 4th, 5th and 6th January a simple single line entry reads, “still in trenches.  Weather terrible - mud and water terrible.”  This entry is again repeated on the 7th with the additional line, “support trenches shelled.  No casualties.”  On the 8th January there is a slight improvement in the weather and the battalion diarist continues, “Working all day to try and keep the trenches standing.  Rain causes dug-outs to fall in and parapets to disappear.  Fascines and sandbags all sink into mud.”  The following day it is “Raining hard again.  Trenches very bad.  It has been decided to start a breastwork in rear of our present line.”  

 

During that month, The Official History records, “the two British corps of the First Army averaged 2,144 officers and men daily absent sick, and the Second Army about the same; in succeeding weeks the numbers fell to about half.”  Londoner Ernest Whitcomb, a 34 year old married man arriving in France on 3rd February as part of a draft for the 1st Middlesex didn’t take long to succumb.  Writing in Nurse Oliver’s album a couple of months later, he wrote simply, Frost Bites in both feet on the 14th Feb at Armentieres.

 

Some other men should never have been in the army at all.  William Butters of Blackheath, London had joined the London Regiment as a Territorial in June 1913.  A married man with six children when war was declared, he was embodied in the 1/20th (County of London) Battalion, (Blackheath and Woolwich) and quickly assigned to the machine-gun section.  He would never though, fire a shot in anger.  Whilst the 1/20th sailed for France in March 1915, Private Butters was posted to the 2/20th battalion and three months later would leave the army for good.

 

At his Medical Board in June 1915 the cause of his discharge was noted as “Phthisis or chronic pulmonary tuberculosis”, the report stating that his condition had, “Originated Nov 1914 at Hatfield.  He states that he was quite well Nov 1914, when he developed a cough.  The cough became worse and he brought up much purulent sputum.  Sleep sweats from March 1915 to April 1915.  Lost some weight.  Present condition a weak and wasted man.  Signs of active tuberculosis in both lungs, particularly the right lung which is affected in its entirety.  Sputum contains enormous numbers of tubercle Bacilli.”  The report concluded that his condition was “not caused by, but rendered active by ordinary military service.  Permanent total incapacity as due to service since Declaration of War.” 

 

William Butters was discharged from the army on 26 June 1915 on a pension of four shillings and eight pence a week.  He received an additional two shillings and sixpence a week for each of his six children.

 

The men from Chailey were also doing their bit.  By April 1915, 103 officers and men from the parish were serving their King and Country on land and sea and some of them had already paid with their lives.  On the day that Hickwells had opened its doors to receive its first six patients, The East Sussex News carried a small item on Lieutenant Lionel Pownall of the 1st Royal West Kent Regiment.  The youngest son of the late Mr Henry H Pownall of Ades, Lionel had obtained his commission less than a fortnight after war was declared.  Now came unofficial news of his death in action.  He was 19 years old.

 

The news came as a stark reminder to the villagers of the reality of the situation abroad, and if they couldn’t actually be out there fighting in the trenches, they could at least do their best to make sure that the returning wounded heroes were given the best possible treatment. “The patients,” reported The Sussex Daily News on April 16th, “seem very happy and comfortable, and return home looking much better for their stay in the country.”  There were two visiting afternoons each week and some of the visitors enjoyed a game of billiards with the men.

 

Billiards though, was the farthest thing from the mind of Henry Smith and George Walburn.  The day after the Chailey report appeared, Walburn was on a troop ship sailing out of Folkestone for Havre and three days later Smith would follow on the propitiously named SS Onward.  For the past seven months they’d had time for little else but drill and now that the moment had finally arrived they were preparing to show the Kaiser what they were made of.

 

George Walburn, born at Reeth in North Yorkshire in April 1888 had joined the Territorials at Redcar in 1909.  Henry Smith, four years his junior, had joined at St George’s Drill Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1912.  On the outbreak of war the entire Territorial Force had been mobilised and both men found themselves in the Northumbrian Division, one of fourteen as yet unnumbered Territorial Divisions known simply by the geographical region in which they were formed.

 

Kitchener appeared to have overlooked them.  Whilst he was populating his New Armies with men who had never held a rifle before in their lives, other Territorials were already on their way overseas.  Furthermore, whilst the recruits to Kitchener’s battalions lacked, in most cases, even rudimentary soldiering experience, the Territorial battalions and artillery formations could usually count on a Regular adjutant and Regular NCO instructors.  Throughout the war, the Territorial Force would retain its identity, recruiting separately, training separately and, for the most part, serving separately in complete Territorial Divisions.  It was to the Territorial battalions that Kitchener had first turned when Britain went to war.  The withdrawal of regular troops from the British Empire’s far flung garrisons to fight in France and Belgium, had left gaps that the Territorials now rushed to fill.  Four battalions from the 1st London Division were posted to Malta in September 1914 and they were followed soon after by two Territorial Middlesex Regiment battalions from the Home Counties Division which went to Gibraltar.  The entire East Lancashire division was sent to Suez to protect the canal and in October, the Wessex Division and The Home Counties Division were sent to India.  Territorials had also been in action on the Western Front as early as October 1914 and had already acquitted themselves well.

 

For Corporal Henry Smith and Lance-Corporal George Walburn it was a matter of pride that they were ‘Terriers’. Like ninety per cent of serving Territorials, both men had immediately volunteered to serve abroad when war was declared and they were eager to prove their mettle.  Between them, Smith and Walburn had seven years’ combined experience of soldiering; Smith with the Northumberland Fusiliers and Walburn with the Yorkshire Regiment.  So it was in April 1915 that the Northumbrian Division, which would not be given its designation as the 50th(Northumbrian) Division until the following month, became the eighth complete Territorial Division to sail abroad; and not a moment too soon, for the situation in Belgium was critical. 

 

During the first few weeks of April, the British Expeditionary Force stationed around Ypres, took over five more miles of the French Front which lay to its left.  This gave the British forces an uninterrupted line thirty miles long stretching from Cuinchy in the south, to the Ypres - Zonnebeke Road.  Here the 1st Canadian Division took over and to their left, completing the salient, the French line ran west of the Ypres - Poelcapelle Road to the canal at Steenstraat where the Belgian Army completed the quartet of allied nations defending beleaguered Ypres.   Although the Allied forces were numerically superior to the German divisions facing them, their position was far from comfortable.  The French line comprising breastworks rather than trenches was in a deplorable condition with parapets in places only four inches thick and flimsy dug-outs that struggled to keep out the rain let alone shells and bullets.  The two divisions manning this area, itself still littered with the decomposing corpses of French and German soldiers killed the previous October, were inexperienced Algerian Zouaves and French Territorials; not the ideal contingent to have holding such a critical part of the line.  Add to this the fact that the allies had few heavy guns and little artillery observation plus no arrangements for uniting the command of the French, Belgian and British/Canadian contingents and the situation could at best be described as precarious.  As the Official History states, “The Germans could hardly select a better sector for the attack” and on the 22nd April, after a preliminary, largely diversionary bombardment of the British-held sector at St Eloi on the 14th, it duly fell.

 

The first ever gas attack, launched by the Germans at 5pm on what The Official History describes as “a glorious spring day” wrought havoc amongst the Zouaves and French Territorials on whom it fell, causing the majority of them to retreat in disarray and opening up a four and a half mile gap in the line through which the Germans readily pushed.  With Ypres now exposed, British and Canadian battalions were rushed in to plug the gap, holding what by now amounted to little more than a series of outposts with hardly a trench or strand of barbed wire to their name.  Into this chaos, rushed up from their reserve positions, marched the Northumbrian Division.

 

In July 1910, little over a year after he’d joined the Territorials, George Walburn had been awarded a certificate in first aid.  Now, as the Germans threatened to push through to Ypres, he found himself waiting anxiously with the rest of the battalion just west of the canal outside Ypres.  One thing was for sure, when his pals went into action, he wouldn’t be in the first line of assault with them.  As a stretcher bearer and medical officer’s orderly, his work would come later.

 

At around midday on the 24th April, the 1/4th Yorks were ordered to concentrate at Wieltje, north west of Ypres.  Shelled at intervals throughout the morning, they’d already sustained five casualties before they’d crossed the canal at Ypres and by the time they arrived in what had been the second-line outside Potijze Chateau some time later, the trenches were already full of men and being heavily shelled.  Orders to attack the nearby village of St Julien with one of the Canadian Brigades had been countermanded and instead they’d been told by the 27th Division holding the line to begin digging trenches by the chateau.  Then the orders had been changed again.  With the 1/4th East Yorks they were to attack through Fortuin and on to St Julien.  And so the battalion with, according to the battalion war diarist, ‘both flanks in the air’ and little artillery support, proceeded under shell fire towards St Julien until heavy rifle and machine gun fire stopped them about 400 yards short of the village.  Here they were joined on their right flank by the Royal Irish Fusiliers and men of the Yorks and Lancs and here too, as the battalion diarist would later proudly record, they would be given the soubriquet ‘Yorkshire Gurkhas’ by the Irishmen.  But it was a hopeless position.  In danger of being cut off and surrounded, they were ordered to hold their positions until dark and then to retire back to Potijze Chateau.  Casualties during the action amounted to six officers and 69 other ranks killed and wounded and George Walburn was one of them.  Near the village of St Jean, he’d caught some shrapnel in his right leg which had fractured his ankle. 

 

Corporal Henry Smith fared little better.  After a calm journey across the Channel, Smith and his companions in the 1/6th Northumberland Fusiliers had spent their first night under canvas at a rest camp outside Boulogne.  The following morning they’d had a brisk three mile march to Pont du Briquet and then picked up a train which had deposited them at Cassel around midnight.  There they had de-trained and marched the five miles to Winnezeele, arriving there at 4.30am and immediately billeted in scattered farms north and south of the village.  They’d spent the rest of the day there.  The following day, St George’s Day, they’d left their billets at 9am and marched off towards Brandhoek at 1.30pm, covering the eleven miles in four and a half hours.  There, with the rest of the Brigade, they’d taken over the GHQ 3rd line trenches either side of the Ypres - Poperinghe Road and remained there until 3.45pm on the 24^th when they were ordered to move via Ypres to Potijze to form a Corps reserve.  At 10.30pm on the 25th the Brigade arrived at Potijze cold and wet through from the rain.  They’d been shelled while passing through Ypres and had already suffered casualties.  Worse was to come. 

 

The following afternoon the Brigade, having been placed under the command of the 1st Canadian Division, received orders to attack St Julien village through the lines of trenches held by the 4th Division.  They would be accompanied by the Lahore Division and they would be the first Territorials to go into action as a Brigade.  At 2pm they attacked in two lines but like the 4th Yorks before them, the situation was hopeless.  As soon as they left the ruins of the village they had been met by a hail of fire: shrapnel shells at first and then rifle and machine gun fire.  Extending into open order the men advanced in rushes as they had been trained in England.  But this wasn’t England and St Julien was an unforgiving training ground.  In England the men had trained in light battle order but here they were still in marching order with a heavy pack that included a greatcoat, full ammunition pouches and an extra bandolier.  Over-burdened, running as best they could over the shell pocked ground they made easy targets for the heavy artillery and machine guns situated in nearby Kitchener Wood, and the casualties soon began to mount.  The men managed to advance to within 500 yards of St Julien village and there they halted.  Without artillery support and with no prospect of reinforcement, further progress was impossible.  They were ordered to remain until dusk when they were withdrawn to the trenches held by the 4th Division. 

 

Later, as the war progressed, and drafts of replacements filled the gaps left by the original 1/6th Northumberland Fusiliers Territorials, the battalion war diarists would have neither the time or the inclination to list casualties sustained by other ranks.  For now though, a minor tribute of a kind would be paid to those who had become casualties.  In a list that would eventually fill eleven foolscap pages of the battalion’s war diary, the number, name, rank, nature of the casualty - killed, wounded or missing - and the date on which it occurred was recorded for every single man:

 

2572 SKEE J, PTE, WOUNDED 26-4-15

1717 SNOWDON J, PTE, WOUNDED 26-4-15 

2074 SPENCE H, PTE, WOUNDED 26-4-15

1584 SMITH H.G, CPL, WOUNDED 26-4-15

 

The date was monotonous, the losses heartbreaking: seven officers and 114 men killed, seven officers and 492 men wounded; all within a week of being overseas and most of those in about one hour on the 26th.

 

The Northumberland Brigade suffered grievously at 2nd Ypres with, according to the War Diary of the 50th Division, 42 officer casualties and 1620 other ranks sustained up till noon on the 28th.  The Official History puts it even higher at 42 and 1912 respectively.  The other brigades had also suffered heavily and by the time the Division was withdrawn, it had suffered over 5,000 casualties.

 

Corporal Smith meanwhile, despite his brief tenure in Belgium, nevertheless had time during the battalion’s ill-fated assault on St Julien, to win the Distinguished Conduct Medal.  His citation in the supplement to The London Gazette of 30th June 1915 read:

 

DCM - For conspicuous gallantry in action, and for his devotion to duty in finally assisting at the end of the engagement in carrying a wounded officer from the firing line, although wounded himself.

 

For now though he would return to England, like George Walburn, his active service with the BEF over after just six days in France and Belgium.  Fifteen months later he would be discharged from the Army.

 

Lance Corporal Walburn was on his way back home too.  After three days at the Number 13 General Hospital Boulogne he was returned to England on 30th April and transferred to the Fort Pitt hospital at Chatham.  There his injury was diagnosed as a compound fracture of the right tibia and the offending shrapnel ball was removed.  The sepsis in the wound cleaned up well and on the 20th May, he was transferred again, this time to West Hall VAD hospital Tunbridge Wells and then to Chailey for convalescence where he sketched a cartoon in Nurse Oliver’s album.  On the 12th November he was back with the 4th Yorkshire’s re-engaging as a Territorial, this time for the duration of the war, but he would not fight again. 

 

On 21st August 1917, after spells with the 3/4th Yorkshires, the 24th Provisional Battalion and latterly the 4th (Reserve) Battalion he was transferred to the Army Reserve and went home to his wife in Redcar.  He was discharged on 21st January 1919 on a pension of five shillings and sixpence a week.