A Family Pilgrimage.

Monday 31st. October 2005.

Speedometer reading 14412.

I spent today completing what few preparations are needed for this short trip. Apart from filling the tank, checking the oil and the tyre pressures the only things I've done to the bike are taking off the headlamp guard to clean the inside and the headlamp lenses (taking the opportunity to replace the screw-fixings with stainless ones) and replacing (for the third time!!!) the left-hand wishbone arm end cap. I don't know why it seems to be the left-hand side that falls out and not the one on the right. This time I used some silicon sealant to try and gum it in place for a little longer.

I'm not camping on this short trip, mainly due to the autumnal weather but also I'm not sure what the availability of camp-sites will be in Northern France/ Southern Belgium.

Instead I have pre-booked a room in a small hotel in Saint-Quentin together with my Dover-Calais, Calais-Dover crossings.

Packing is much quicker without checking through the camping gear and the absence of all that extra weight means that I've been able to add some of the things that I usually need to leave out, in this case books.

Quite a few books in fact. It isn't that I intend to spend my time reading but this trip has more of a purpose than others I've made recently so the books are for me to research and make references over the next week or so.

Those of you who know me, or others who have read some of my earlier ramblings, probably know that I'm an enthusiastic amateur historian. I have long wanted to spend some time in the area where British and Commonwealth troops fought between 1914 and 1918.

There is a personal reason for me making this trip now. Bear with me and I will explain.

I come from an army family. Particularly on my father's side. Most of the male members of the family have served in the army for several generations. This was not some officer-class sense of serving one's country, it was a wholly more pragmatic driving force, namely the need to earn a living wage. In the vernacular, my paternal family was firmly rooted in the 'working-class'. Up to and including my generation there was very little investment made in such things as education, both by the family and by society. There was little need, unemployment on the scale we see today (apart of course during times such as The Great Depression of the 1930's) was unheard of. Most people went to school and obtained sufficient education to enable them to function in what we now call 'Blue-collar' jobs. When I left school at the age of fifteen, like most of my contemporaries, I had no qualifications but also no despair of gaining employment.

My paternal grandfather was for some of his early years a professional soldier, that is he was a volunteer. He chose to join the army. In the UK there has long been an antipaphy towards conscription, even during the Great War (1914-1918) which consumed young men at the most alarming rate, conscription was avoided until very late in the war.

He served prior to and throughout the Great War in an Infantry regiment. The only information I have about his service is by word of mouth from my father and some papers I have now.

I have mentioned that many of my family served. That includes my father, his younger brother, my oldest brother and myself.

Only in later life did I learn that one of my grandafther's brothers served in the great War too and that he was killed somewhere on the Western Front.

My father's younger brother (after whom I was named) never had any children. The absence of any extended family never really struck me but when I first heard about a great-uncle of whom I knew nothing, I felt touched by those events between 1914-1918 personally.

Up until that time, although I had always been interested in the Great War, partly from the historic perspective and also because of the horror concerning the manner in which it was conducted, I now have a personal sense of loss. After all, if this unknown great-uncle had survived, married and had children, I might have had a much larger extended family than I do.

The oral family tradition was that my grandfather had an older brother and a younger brother named Arthur but who was known as Percy, presumably a nickname. It wasn't clear whether Percy was a professional soldier too but I had assumed so because the story was that he was killed in 1914. Bearing in mind that the Great War didn't start until August 1914 and that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), sent to France at the outbreak of war was in fact in the main, The British Army. Some Territorial and Reserve formations were sent too but general mobilisation didn't see new units in France until some time later. Of course replacements for casualties were sent to the Regular units in France but in the main it was as Kaiser Willhelm II notoriously named the BEF, "that contemptible little army" that fought to buy time in the first months of the war.

Again, family oral history had it that uncle Percy was killed on active service but had no known grave.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commision maintains all military cemeteries and keeps a register of where individual, identified soldiers, sailors and airmen killed since 1914 are interred. I made several enquiries to try and find out where uncle Percy was buried but with no success.

It seemed as though the circumstances, as passed on, were correct.

I had almost accepted this. Apart from the nagging feeling that because there was some doubt about the name, Arthur but called Percy by the family, there might be some way of confirming the facts.

The 1901 Census came to my aid. I searched on the family name (fortunately not very common) and found my great-grandafther and great-grandmother's entry. There was a William J. aged 9 years, Charles A. aged 8 (my grandfather), Percy R. aged 4 and Arthur S. aged 9 months. My mother was able to confirm the Northwood, London address given in the census.

This confirmed that Percy and Arthur were not the same person. Percy was very unlikely to have been a soldier in 1914 as he was barely of service age when the war started.

As I had now confirmed Percy as his first name and I had an intitial, I returned to the CWGC and searched on those details. There was only one exact match and his regiment was given as the London Regiment, a Territorial formation, raised during the war. This of course linked to the family home and the fact that my grandfather served in the Royal Fusiliers (The City of London Regiment). This latter part is explained that Percy would probably have tried to follow his older brother into the same regiment (just as I did later when I followed my older brother into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers as the regiment is now called!) but that owing to the full war-time mobilisation, regiments such as the Fusiliers had too many battalions so new war-time regiments were named to prevent things becoming too unwieldy. These 'sister' regiments maintained close association with the older regiments.

I can almost hear the recruiting officer explaining this to Percy when he enlisted and 'took the King's shilling'.

So now the CWGC has an entry for 472916 Rifleman Percy J. Prince, 1/12th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (The Rangers).

Percy was killed when the 56th Division attacked the enemy positions at Neuville-Vitasse, France, between 7th and 9th April 1917. Neuve-Vitasse was taken by the division on the 9th!

He lies in the London Cemetery at Neuville-Vitasse and I intend visiting his grave this week.

It seems only right that a member of Percy's family visits his grave before the 90th anniversary of his death comes around.

Comments

[Adam Houlding]

Dear sir,

read with interest these passages.

I have found out more information about the battle. As my great grandfather died on morning of 9th probably in first hour after running the trenches at the order of 7.45 am. William Houlding was my grand father of the 4th royal fusiliers. I have a few photos, incl. one with some fellow soldiers. It may be interesting to know that the whole of the 4th had an Easter service with Rev Martin Andrews in a cellar on 8th march in Arrras, with a sugar box as an alter, a crisp white cloth donated by a local French woman and two candles. In fact the London regiment spilled out on the street and the Chaplin blessed them all. Apparently it was very moving.
I would suspect your great uncle would have died on morning of 9th.

I suggest you get hold of Cheerful sacrifice by Jonathan Nicolls. PAge 117 to 122 is specifically about the battle percy would have been in with mentions of some of his fellow soldiers

Hope you get this

Adam H