portsmouth poetry  From A Borrowed Biro

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM E(AUS) 1220

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Albert Victor Webb  1898 - 1917   A 'Pompey Pal' Died Passchendaele

                                                        [from the Pompey Pals Project]

James Okenden  A Portsmouth Passchendaele Victoria Cross

Frederick Arthur Jeffery Corporal 28653

&

Rupert Brooke  Famous 'War Poet' served in Portsmouth before embarkation

In addition to the research, exhibition and archive, Portsmouth Poetry undertook to work with a local school to assist in their teaching about Passchendaele and WW1. We supplied the biographies listed above and teaching materials to help pupils understand the nature of life in the trenches.

Material was also supplied from the project tailored to help pupils understand some of the war related poems included in the AQA GCSE English syllabus entitled "Poetry of Conflict"

In addition, we ran a competition for the whole school inviting pupils to submit poems based on the lives of Portsmouth men who fought at Paaschendaele

Building on the teaching, we organised a whole school Poetry Competition for pupils from Year 7 to Year 11 (Key Stage 3 & 4). Pupils were invited to submit a poem about life in the trenches based on the life of Frederick Arthur Jeffery (a Portsmouth soldier who fought at Passchendaele and is buried in Milton Cemetery) 

The poetry submitted by Admiral Lord Nelson pupils was of an exemplary quality. Judging was a very difficult task and, had funding allowed, we would have wished to award more prizes than we were able.

Highly Commended prize winning poems displayed interesting and inventive subject matter or approach, evidence of lines of good poetry and use of language and a strong understanding of the nature of trench warfare and empathy with those who endured it.

The Outstanding winning poets Isaac Butler and Jessica Needham with Josh Brown & Liz Weston of Portsmouth Poetry,  Sarah Giles & Bex Milner of Big Ideas and Penny Mordaunt MP

Susan Owen c 1930

Wilfred Owen died exactly one week before the cease fire that ended WW1.

At 11.00 am on November 11th the church bells in Shrewsbury had just started to ring to announce the war had ended when there was a knock at the door of the Owen family home in Monkmoor Road. Mrs Owen answered, the postman handed her the telegram announcing Wilfred was dead. She fell to floor weeping.

The double tragedy, obscene in its cruelty, experienced by Susan Owen on the day peace was declared was not unique. Many mothers, sisters and wives endured the same loss at the very time they thought their prayers had been answered!  Our work and the research by the late Tim Backhouse has uncovered the following men from Portsmouth whose families suffered this same tragedy.

ARTHUR ROBERT NICHOLS   23rd October 1918 (2 weeks before the Armistice means notification of his death will either have reached his family after peace was declared or shortly before

ALBERT GEORGE HASKETT  4th or 6th November 1918 (either 7 days or 5 days before). His relatives will not have received the notification until after the Armistice was declared. Albert was one of the 12 Passchendaele Exhibition biographies

FREDERICK CHARLES THICK   9th November 1918 (2 days before means his family will have received the notification some days after the war ended)

ALFRED ERNEST TILLEY     11th November 1918 Armistice Day. Germany signed the declaration of surrender at 5.am but British decided to make the actual cease fire 11.00 am on the 11th of November (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month} for dramatic effect. Fighting continued until the very second. Many men died needlessly. Alfred Tilley died within a few hours of the end!

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The area has a history of heavy rain in late summer and autumn. The decision to launch a major offensive at that time may be questionable. Despite the evidence to the contrary, for many years Haig claimed that the BEF had little knowledge of this weather pattern.

On August the second, the 3rd day of Passchendaele (Pilckem Ridge), rains start that caused the battle to be halted for 8 days. August and October were the worst recorded precipitation in over 30 years. In August 1917, 127 mm of rain fell in Flanders, double the normal average for the month.  In October 30 mm of rain fell in five days ( 4th to the 9th).

But rain alone was not the cause of the hell that made Passchendaele infamous! 

WW1 trench warfare involved heavy preliminary bombardment before the  battle proper commenced. This served several purposes.

24 hour bombardment was meant to damage enemy emplacements and reduce numbers, fatigue enemy troops (sleep was brief) and reduce morale. The resulting shell holes also provided important fox holes into which men going ‘over the top’ could seek shelter. But it damaged the Flanders topsoil exposing clay that soon became mire and it damaged the delicate drainage systems so the water remained where it had fallen. Shell craters became deep pools of stagnant water that men seeking shelter from machine gun fire could not escape. The wounded who might normally have survived suffocated in the liquid mud. Running across ‘no-mans land’ in a “push” was slower and more difficult leaving men vulnerable to sniper and machine gun. 

More men died of drowning during Paaschendaele than in any other battle in recorded history.

If that was not enough, heavy mist in the days before the battle (themselves an indicator of what was to come) made aerial reconnaissance impossible. The start of the battle was delayed for several days allowing the German army to prepare for an offensive and destroying any benefit of surprise.

September was mostly dry but not enough to begin to resolve the swamp the Ypres Salient had become. The three major pushes in the sector (Menin Road,Polygon Wood and Broodseinde) took place during this period helped by strong supporting artillery fire. 

In an interview with war correspondents on 11 October, Field Marshal Haig acknowledged the weather and terrain problems -‘It was simply the mud which defeated us …..The men did splendidly to get through it as they did.  But the Flanders mud, as you know, is not a new invention” Despite this, Haig denied knowledge of the Flanders rain for many years after before finally admitting it was a fact his forces should (and could) have known.

If Haig's persistence in continuing the battle seems questionable, there were real dangers in halting the offensive.  It would have been difficult and costly in lives to hold the position so there was some tactical necessity.  Perhaps it can be argued that the final push to capture Passchendaele through the dreadful mud of October and November was a combination of this tactical necessity, However Haig’s inflexible desire to push on was also a cause.

For the Germany the rain was Heaven-sent.  Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, the Field Marshal in command noted in his diary (12 October 1917) – “Sudden change of weather.  Most fortunate rain, our most effective ally”

David Craven enlisted with the 2nd Hampshire Regiment in January 1915, six months into his two year sentence.  It was common practice for young offenders to be recruited in exchange for their release on licence.  His service records did not survive the Second World War and the only remaining history of his service in the National Roll of the Great War lists Loos, Ypres, the Somme, Arras, Passchendaele, the German Offensive and Allied Advance of 1918.

He was demobilised February 1919, and awarded  the Victory and British War medals. He married Nellie Haswell in Portsmouth in 1929, but is the only person recorded as living at 3 Cottage Lane in the 1939 Census Register. 

David Craven’s battalion fought at the front line of the first day of the Battle of Langemarck.  The Battalion’s diary entry records

“Night very dark and ground very boggy.  Some men had to be pulled out by ropes.  Battn experienced some shelling on the march and suffered a few casualties.  Men behaved very steadily and there was no noise.”

Battle of Langemarck. British troops moving forward over shell-torn ground near Pilckem, 16th August 1917.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

© IWM (Q 2708)

John Ficken’s story is unusual because his father Johan was a German immigrant who moved to London before 1880.

He was already a soldier 1911 with the Royal Garrison Artillery on Spitbank Fort.  He married Amy Ellis daughter of a gunner in the Royal Marine Artillery whose family can be traced to 1732. They had one daughter, Joan, and were living at 7 Hollam Road in 1939 . John worked for  Southdown Motor Services. 

A serving soldier when the war broke out. John’s Battery mobilised in August 1914 and went to Egypt and then France.  The National Roll of the Great War records that he played a “distinguished part” in the Battles of Ypres II, Somme, Vimy Ridge, Messines, Passchendaele, the Retreat and Advance of 1918 and was still serving in 1920.  He became Battery Quarter Master Sergeant.

Three of his brothers also served; Frederick a Leading Stoker in the RN, Albert a Sergeant of the Essex Regiment and Henry a Private of the London Regiment and Labour Corps.  Frederick was killed in action at the Battle of Jutland, Albert at the Battle Somme in 1st July 1916.  This moved John to request that Henry be allowed to transfer to his battalion. The request was granted but Henry had four cases of being AWOL and was finally tried for desertion and sentenced to two years detention in 1917.  This was overturned in exchange for returning to the front line.

At Passchendaele John served in the 32nd Siege Battery; the siege battery’s responsibility was to bombard the enemy artillery with heavy explosives and target strongpoints behind enemy lines.

John Ficken died in Portsmouth on 26th December 1941.

A 15-inch Mark II howitzer of the Royal Garrison Artillery elevated and ready to fire, near Ypres, 27th September 1917, during the Battle of Polygon Wood part of the Battle of Passchendaele.

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Born in Portsmouth, the fifth of 11 children; five boys and six girls.  His parents, John and Ellen Squires, were also born in Portsmouth. In 1901 they are living at 88 Lower Church Path, Fratton.

Harry Squires married Daisy Smith in Portsmouth in 1910,they had two children, Dorothea and Violet. Harry’s army service records have not survived the National Roll has two entries for him, giving some contradictory information and his enlistment as November 1916 and January 1917.

His brothers Albert and Charles also enlisted in 1916; Harry and Albert to the Hampshire Regiment and Charles to the 4th Worcestershire Regiment.  Albert, the eldest a Rifleman, was killed in action in the second Battle of Gaza on 19th April 1917.  He had been a soldier for six months.

Harry and Charles were both drafted to the Western Front early 1917. Harry Squires was fighting with the 2nd Battalion Hampshire Regiment acting as an unpaid Lance Corporal. 

The Battalion’s War Dairy of 24th August records:

Early morning quiet.  Some enemy aeroplanes flying low over our lines, his artillery was not so   active as usual … 6 killed, 9 wounded, 1 wounded (at duty)

Dudley Heynes was born in Bolton where his father was a Baptist minister.  He moved to Portsmouth with his wife Helen either late 1914 or early 1915 after graduating as a Solicitor to work for Pink and Marston Solicitors in Hampshire Terrace making their home in 83 Winter Road, Southsea. 

Newspaper articles report some of Heynes’ court cases. During the war, Pink and Marston were regular contributors to the War Relief Fund, an act that Dudley refers to with admiration in one of his letters to his wife.

Dudley and Helen had two children, Morris (b. 1915) and Lynette (b. 1917).  He spent little time with them, but Helen regularly sent him photos. The 1939 register shows Helen and Morris still living at 83 Winter Road and that Morris has followed his father into practicing law. 

In June 1916 Dudley enlisted in the Artists Rifles, a selective regiment whose members included war artist Paul Nash and poet Wilfred Owen.  He was gazetted as a 2nd Lieut. with the Royal Field Artillery in December and served in the field from 12th February 1917. His battery was attached to the Royal Horse Artillery, and letters home refer to his horse “good old Polly”. 

As an officer Dudley held his soldiers in extremely high esteem.  Dudley wrote and received letters frequently. They evidence is love for his family, his admiration and respect for all British soldiers and his anger at the ‘Boche’. 

He took hardship in his stride:

“I have not slept away from the various gun positions since Jun 24th [21 days] – longer than any other officer in the whole Brigade, and I only had one night in rest where the others had three weeks.  It couldn’t be helped…” (extract of a letter to Helen dated 15th August 1917). 

Dudley Heynes‘ battalion was in the field throughout the Battle of Passchendaele.  On 27th August he suffered a gunshot wound to his head.  His diary entry records:

Dudley Hugo Heynes -- Missing Memorial, Frome

In the process of researching Dudley Heynes, we discovered that there was a memorial plaque commemorating him in the Memorial Theatre Frome, Somerset.

Opened in 1925 as a memorial hall in memory of those who fell in the 1st World War, it became a theatre and cinema in the 1930's with the installation of seating and traded as "The Grand".  The plaque was originally located in Sheppards Barton Baptist Church in the town where his father had been minister and was relocated to the Memorial Theatre when the church closed.  

However, an enquiry at the theatre on our behalf failed to trace the plaque. If you have any information regarding this important memorial we would love to hear from you.

Memorials Online website         www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/148165

Memorial Theatre website         http://www.fmt.website

Richard Aldington, Bertram Andrews**, Robert H Beckh**, Hilaire Belloc, Edmund Blunden, Mary Borden, John Le Gay Brereton, Vera Brittain, Rupert Brooke, May Wedderburn Cannan, Margaret Postgate Cole,

Eric Thirkell Cooper, Leslie Coulson **, John Crommelin-Brown, Elizabeth Daryush, Jeffery Day**,

Geoffrey Deamer, Eva Dobell, Eleanor Farjeon, Geoffrey Faber, James Griffin Fairfax, Ford Maddox Ford, Gilbert Frankau, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Julian Grenfell**, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney, Thomas Hardy,

F W Harvey, Hedd Wyn**, A. P. Herbert,  Agnes Grozier Herbertson, W N Hodgson** Cyril Morton Horne**,

Dyneley Hussey, David Jones, Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, Anna Gordon Keown, Tom Kettle**,

Rudyard Kipling, Francis Ledwidge**, Joseph Lee, Roland Leighton, Winifred M Letts, C S Lewis,

Wyndham Lewis, PHB Lyon, Ewart Alan Mackingtosh**, Hamish Mann** Frederick Manning, Charlotte Mew, Bernard Moore, Edith Nesbitt, Henry Newbolt, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen,  John Oxenham,

Nowell Oxland**, Vivian de Sola Pinto, Jessie Pope, Herbert Read, Isaac Rosentberg**, Edward Owen Rutter, Lady Margaret Sackville, Siegfreid Sassoon, Owen Seaman, Alan Seeger**, Robert Service, May Sinclair,

Tom Skeyhill, Louis B Solomon**, Charles Sorley**,  Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart**, Robert Serling**,

Will Streets**, Muriel Stuart, Edward Tennant**, Edward Thomas**, Katherine Tynan, Robert Vernede**, Geoffrey Wall, Gilbert Waterhouse**, Alec Waugh, Arthur Graeme West**  T P Cameron Wilson**

John Fletcher was the fourth of five children born to James and Ellen Fletcher who moved to Portsmouth between 1881 and 1885.  In 1891 the family lived at 99 Belgrave Square. James, a mineral water manufacturer had a brushes with the law until his death in 1897. Ellen took over the business, before advertising in the Portsmouth Evening News for a partner.  She married Robert Fletcher, a man 21 years her junior, something John was not happy with and which led to a couple of court appearances. Ellen and Robert later separated and she suffered bankruptcy in 1902.

John married Portsmouth girl Harriett Croomer in 1901 and they moved to 58 Lancaster Road.  By the 1911 census they had moved again to 7 Warwick Street, John’s occupation is recorded as carman and they have four children. 

John Fletcher enlisted with the Royal Navy in 1906, he later he deserted. In October 1916 John enlisted with the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry, and was posted to the Western Front. 

At Passchendaele John’s battalion (6th) was in training until they were sent to relieve the 7th Battalion K.R.R.C. in the trenches.  They fought in the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge, where John Fletcher lost his life.  He is commemorated at Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium.

John’s wife Harriett remarried in 1920 and she is recorded in the 1939 Register living at 8 Warwick Road, her and John’s address during the war

Men taking a rest break Battle of Menin Road Ridge: "Clapham Junction"

A first generation Portsmouth boy, third of four children, his parents had moved to Portsmouth between 1893 and 1897.  Father Charles was a shipwright in Portsmouth Dockyard living at 6 Northumberland Road. In 1901 and 4 Eton Road, Southsea in 1911.

George Stebbens secured an appointment in Horsham in 1913 as a telegraphist moving  to Sutton in 1914 and from there to Faversham as an SC&T – Sorting Clerk and Telegraphist. 

George was called up in September 1916, to the Royal Engineers Signal Depot as a Wireless Operator and he joined the BEF on 13th March 1917, transferred to the 50th Divisional Signal Company on 25th  August 1917 four weeks in to the Battle of Passchendaele. Their role was to keep all lines of communication open, from wireless to visual to pigeon, and report on and immobilize German cables

Charles Greentree was one of three brothers, 2nd generation Portsmouth boys with three sisters. Both sets of grandparents had moved to Portsea in the 1850s. By the 1891 census they were living in Hope Street without their father. 

The brothers (Charles, George and Frederick), with thousands of other children, were taken by Dr Barnardos to start new lives in Canada where they became farm workers

The oldest of the brothers, Charles joined up in November 1915 and sailed for England in September 1916 before being sent to the front on 21st August 1917.   He stayed in Portsmouth his 'home' town  (the naval port had a major role in troop movement) and married Violet Freeman there in December 1916.

Brother George had joined in 1914 a day after youngest brother Frederick.   Sent to the Western Front in May 1915; he was blown out of a wagon and suffered shell shock, and was discharged as medically unfit.

Frederick was also sent to the Western Front in 1915, and taken prisoner . He was released on 8th January 1919 after four years as a POW dying of meningitis attributed to his war service 18 months later. 

                “Taken as a whole, the fighting during this tour was some of the heaviest that has been                encountered in the war.”

4th Canadian Division War Diary August 1917

Charles was granted special leave of absence to England for 14 days on the 29th December and returned to the Front 12th January 1918.  His son Roy Charles was born the following September. After the war he returned to Canada with his wife and son and  became a Game Warden.

Born in Portsmouth, the third of four children; Charles, Albert, Percy and Mabel.  His father Albert, a naval armourer, moved the family to Portsmouth from Surrey between 1893 and 1896 when he was posted to HMS Excellent in March 1895. In 1901 the family was living at 32 George Street.  The address was still in the family in 1939 though Percy is living in Fareham with his wife Annie, they married in1934.

Percy joined the1st Hampshire Regiment 1915 and was posted to the Western Front. He was wounded in the Battle of the Somme, recovered and returned to active service fighting at Passchendaele and the 1918 retreat  where he was seriously wounded and subsequently lost his leg.

Percy’s brothers and his father also served in the war; brothers Charles and Albert in the Hampshire Regiment and father Albert back in the navy where he was in Battle of Jutland before being put on shore duties. Albert junior was a 1st Class Signaller and  suffered a gunshot wound to his left shoulder  in 1917 and was discharged  in 1918.  Charles also fought on the Western Front in the Battles of Arras and Messines.  He was wounded and taken prisoner of war in 1918 and held at Darmstadt POW camp until 1919.

Passchendaele lasted 103 days

Over half a million men died

Historian AJP Taylor claimed that figures were officially altered to reduce casualties numbers. Although he challenged Taylor, military historian John Terraine quoted "normal wastage" as averaging 35,000 per month in the "quiet periods". The Total average for Passchendaele is 5000-6000 per day or 90,000 British and Allied casulaties per month!

Men and horses drowned in the mud. More men died from drowning (not enemy fire) than in any other recorded battle in history

Thousands were wounded or suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Few survivors ever talked about their experiences

"When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

— Harry Patch

Buttes New British Cemetery in Zonnebeke, Flanders

We wish to thank the Free Software Foundation for use of this photograph under © GNU Free Documentation License

There are many cemeteries around the Ypres Salient, including the mass graves witnessed by Jack Seely

The Buttes New British Cemetery in Zonnebeke. Zonnebeke, West Flanders, Belgium seen here is one of the smaller burial grounds resulting from Passchendaele. It contains 2093 dead of whom 1600 (76%) are unidentified

Many dead remained where they fell or were absorbed into the mud. In 1919, when the battlefield clearances began, the bodies of 25,000 Commonwealth soldiers were found in the area north, south and east of Passchendaele. More than 70% were unidentifiable. Of the 11,954 men honoured at Tyne Cot 8367 (70%) are unidentified dead.Their graves are marked with the words "Known Unto God"

Some 42,000 bodies have never been recovered. These include John Frederick White RAMC of Portsmouth

German General Staff documents state Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the battle. Had it been continued for two more weeks it is possible the war might have ended in 1917 not 1918

The nomclementure applied to General Haig as the “Butcher of the Somme” continues to be debated, his responsibility in Passchendaele is often overlooked

"As a small boy in Southsea, I saw streets disfigured by ragged, unwanted ex-soldiers, medalled but ill, blind, maimed, selling matches, bootlaces, notepaper, trundling barrel-organs or standing with a melancholy dog or monkey beside a decrepit hurdy-gurdy. Whether they were pleading or abusive, resigned or menacing, they appalled me. Their wretchedness suggested that, in overthrowing Germany, they had earned some monstrous penalty now being inexorably exacted."

Peter Vansittart

Voices from the Great War  Pimlico Books

[Copyright Note -- this is the only item (quotation or image) for which permission to use has not been sought and given where copyright exists. In preparing for the exhibition, permission was sought from the publishers Random House who own/owned Pimlico but without success as the book is no longer in print. All attempts to track down Vansittart's widow who inherited his literary estate both in the UK and abroad failed despite contacting his solicitor who drew up and executed his will. UK copyright law allows non-profit use of limited quotations where every reasonable effort has been made to secure permission from the estate of an author. With regret, the quotation was not used in the exhibition but is included here as it is such a succinct and well written description of the fate of so many WW1 combatants. If you have information which would allow us to contact the current owner of Peter Vansittart's estate please contact us.

Josh Brown

The Victoria Cross is the highest British award for valour in battle. During Passchendaele, several of the men in our biographies were awarded the Military Medal, the award immediately below the VC.

Three Victoria Crosses were awarded to Portsmouth men or men commanding soldiers from the city. They were not included in the Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project only because their details are already well documented.

Dennis Hewitt

14th  Battalion Hampshire Regiment (the 1st ‘Pompey Pals’). VC won at St Julien on the 1st day of Passchendaele (31st July 1917). Having joined the regiment in 1917 as a 2nd Lieutenant after leaving Winchester College he found himself in charge of a company at 19! Hewitt organised his men despite being badly wounded at Pilckem Ridge and led them to the next objective line which was secured. Hewitt died in a hail of machine gun fire. He has no known grave and is remembered at Tyne Cot. The VC was awarded posthumously.

Montague Moore

15th Battalion Hampshire Regiment (the 2nd ‘Pompey Pals’). Joined the Hampshires after Sandhurst. Joined Passchendaele after removering from wounding at Messines Ridge. Led an attack on 20 October suffering heavy losses and then shelled by British artillery the following day. Moore and 10 surviving men sheltered for a day and night until they could return to British lines in the morning mist. They had been in ‘no man’s land’ for 48 hours. Moore died in Kenya in 1966.

James Ockenden

1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. After fighting and being wounded at Gallipoli, he was awarded the Military Medal in France in 1917 before being sent to Passchendaele. As an acting Sergeant-Major, on 4th October at Langemark, he saw that his company were held up by machine gun fire, rushed the gun and captured it. Then he led his company into an attack despite heavy fire forcing a garison to surrender. Born and brought up in Landport, he survived the war and returned to Portsmouth to work in the dockyard. Crowds chered him on his return home. He died in 1966. The City Council named Ockenden Close in his honour. His family still live in the city. There is a memorial to James Ockenden in the Fratton British Legion and a family bench in Burgoyne Gardens Southsea. James Ockenden was also awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. A pavement memorial was laid on October 4th 2017 to mark the centenary of his heroism.

Portsmouth Grammar School Book of Remembrance

131 ex-PGS pupils fought in WW1 and the fallen were commemorated in a school project in 2014. They include four men who fought at Passchendaele

Cecil Harte Barry

Lieytenant 17th Battalion Royal Irish Regiment and 57th Squadron Royal Flying Corps. Killed in action 21st August 1917. Listed at Tyne Cot

Cyril  Alfred Spencer Buck

2nd  Lieutenant 18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles) and attached to 2nd/3rd Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers). Killed in action 26th October 1917. Listed at Tyne Cot.

Arthur Graham Cook

Private 1st Portsmouth Battalion 14th Hampshire Regiment (1st Pompey Pals). Died of wounds 17th September 1917. Buried in Reninghelst Cemetery

Lionel Ernest Schloss

2nd  Lieutenant 44th Company Machine Gun Corps. Killed in action on the 1st day of Passchendaele 31st July 1917. Listed at the Menin Gate Memorial

Details of these men can be found on the Portsmouth Grammar School website at

http://www.pgs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Book-of-Remembrace

History In Portsmouth

The excellent local history website of the late Tim Backhouse details the largest number of biographies of men from Portsmouth who died in WW1. This is the most detailed and comprehensive research yet published about men from the city in the Great War. Backhouse took the names of the WW1 dead from the Portsmouth Cenotaph and researched them and their families. He also discovered a number of men missing from the memorial roll. Among these are the following names of 47 men who fought (or may have fought) at Passchendaele.

Portsmouth Poetry is a non-profit voluntary body launched during the 2016 Portsmouth Festivities which was set up to promote mixed-arts  events and activities in the city. Its mission is to work in partnership with other venues and organisations in art, theatre, music and education to provide performances and community and educational projects based upon poetry drawing on a broad spectrum of expertise.

The Project arose out of discussions with Portsmouth Cathedral to promote poetry based events in the Cathedral in keeping with the ethical and humanitarian concerns that are shared by poets and faiths. More than four years into the centenary commemoration we were concerned that Passchendaele being less well known than other WW1 engagements and overshadowed by the Somme might not receive the remembrance it deserved. We decided to produce an exhibition, performance and educational activities to highlight not only the tragedy of Paaschendaele but the contribution to it from the city of Portsmouth. The exhibition and performance were locates in St Thomas's Cathedral as part of the 2017 Portsmouth Festivities

The HLF funded project comprised

• In-depth historical research to identify and produce biographies of Portsmouth participation in the battle

• A month long commemorative exhibition in Portsmouth (St Thomas’s) Cathedral and video narrative on

• An autumn term schools project for Year 7-11 3 pupils.
• A digital archive of the research outcomes and permanent home for the exhibition materials

The Passchendaele Project was recognised by a £10,000 award as making an important contribution to local heritage by helping the city to recognise and understand its recent history and the part it and its people played.

The Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Centenary research project was an enormous success. The diligence and expertise of our archivist Donna Bish produced a depth of detail and information rarely achieved in investigating the Great War and for each of the 12 biographies in our exhibition included not only detail of the experience at Passchendaele but the war service, their lives and family details (particularly rare). The end result is some of the most informative research into WW1 and Portsmouth.

Researching WW1 is very difficult. To obtain information, three things are needed-

1 informative data has to have been properly collected

2 the data needs to have been recorded effectively

3 this information needs to be safely archived so as to be accessible to subsequent generations.

If any one of these is inadequate, securing reliable information will be difficult and obscured. In the case of the first world war, all three are faulted!

The British armed forces kept only the briefest of information on its men. By contrast, better recording was made by our allies such as the Canadians and he best records were kept by the Germany evidenced, for example, in the Wikipaedia entry on Passchendaele which gives detailed German casualty figures and none for the BEF. In addition, slightly better records were kept of officers than the rank and file though still minimal in content and rigorous censorship at the time limited the content of letters home, war diary entries and the scenes permitted in photography. Much of our understanding of the true horror of 3rd Ypres has come from German and French forces where these restrictions were less vigorous.

Subsequent storage and archiving is a problem. The records of officers were kept in a rural location and have survived. Those of ‘ranks’ were stored in London and 60% were lost in a direct hit during the WW2 ‘blitz’. Military records, where they have survived, have no connection with other records such as the national census so that to complete a full account of the lives of WW1 servicemen requires accessing data from unconnected sources. A number of online ‘ancestry’ sites now exist but are still far from complete, unconnected and expensive to access. Researching our recent past is costly, very time consuming and requires a good understanding of how conduct such investigation. The best outcome of the WW1 Centenary would have been to coordinate these sources.

“Every time an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down.” Alex Haley
The universal response of those men who did survive the war. Symptomatic of PTSD, they buried the horror internally and never spoke about it. All but a few, took their story to the grave.   In the 1960’s the BBC attempted a documentary for the 50th anniversary in which veterans would talk of their experiences. Over a thousand veterans were approached but only 15 would agree to do so and most of these reluctantly. The famous Harry Patch did not talk of his experiences until the very end of his long life.

Not only do these problems hamper the investigation of WW1, they fuel controversy and disagreement over what happened. Even obtaining an agreed figure on the number of men who died during Passchendaele is impossible!

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum  © IWM (Q 2978)

To access details of the research and how it was completed, the full biographies of the 12 Portsmouth men featured here and in our Exhibition and the identifying information on over 400 Portsmouth WW1 soldiers, CLICK ON THE BUTTON "RESEARCH" BELOW TO DOWNLOAD IN PDF

The exhibition consisted of 30 printed plates mounted on 5 display boards hung from the windows of the Ambulatory of Portsmouth Cathedral. A display banner at the start and end of the displays explained the project purpose and provided information about the Battle of Passchendaele and concluding information about the battle and the people and organisations who had assisted the production of the exhibition.

In addition to the biographies there were illustrative images and quotations used to narrate the exhibition

The exhibition opened on June 16th and closed July 14th 2017

Written and Choreographed by Liz Weston of Portsmouth Poetry and our researcher Donna Bish, "The Angels Cry" incorporated drama, dance, music, singing, film and images to tell the story of World War 1 as it was experienced by the women left behind - mothers, wives, lovers and sisters, the people most frequently given as next of kin when men enlisted drawing parallels with more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women who worked in the factories to supply the war, endured the hardship of raising families alone and suffered grief when their men died. The title is taken from "Passchendaele" by Iron Maiden

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

© IWM (Q 3014A)

The intention of the Passchendaele Project was to raise awareness and understanding of WW1 and to engage local people with their heritage. How can we judge the extent to which this has been achieved? Numbers, where possible, tell us how many have accessed the information but not its impact. Oral and written responses tell us more. Here is my own experience.

For 10 months, Passchendaele took over my life. Most days were spent working on some aspect of the project. Initially, I was dispassionate about the battle and those who endured it. It was history. But slowly, the men and women who lived through this terrible period, the poets who chronicled its pain and bravery became ‘real’. No longer names from a distant past, they became people, neighbours and relatives whose stories were deeply moving.

As the project progressed I became more personally and emotionally engaged. Passchendaele is not just a piece of history  it is part of our own identity which we have a personal duty to protect. On more than one occasion it brought me to tears!

How can you not be sad reading the letters of Dudley Heynes to his beautiful young wife; the death of the talented young Frederick White while saving others, the bravery of the priest who rescued Percy Eastland or the unfathomable tragedy of Albert Haskett who survived Passchendaele only to die three days before the war ended? How can you not be moved reading the poems and memories of those who endured and died? Hedd Wyn and Francis Ledwidge whose talent would have made them famous C20th poets had they not died on the same afternoon. Vera Brittain’s numbed misery on receiving the death notification of her brother. Harry Patch’s incomprehension at the futility of the Great War. Siegfried Sassoon’s rage against its injustice and incompetence.

Slowly, I began to reconnect with my own father and grandfather. I was very young when Taid (Welsh for Granddad) died. He was a miner turned brilliant carpenter; well read, warm and generous but (so I was told) prone to dark moods and hypochondria. I started to remember some of his letters to my mother in the 1950’s and family reminiscences and identify the dark spectre of PTSD they had failed or refused to recognise. I thought more and more of the little I knew of my fathers WW2 experiences at D Day and in the months after and the magnitude of what he had been through and how he and my father in law both refused to talk of the war keeping it forever locked deep inside, an unspoken past. I felt and still feel a profound sorrow that it was only after their passing that I recognised the scale of what these close relatives had lived through and survived.

Throughout, there were unbelievable, improbable coincidences.

My birthday was a few days after I purchased the postcard sent from Portsmouth that featured in the exhibition under the title “Some Came Home”. Late that evening Matthew, my eldest stepson, suddenly said, “You bought a world war one postcard this week”. Surprised, I asked him how he knew to which he replied “You bought it from my father!” A hospice had been given the postcard collection of a lady they had cared for and Matt’s father had volunteered to sell them on Ebay to raise funds. The likelihood of the purchaser being someone he knew is more than remote.

My wife knows little of the history of her Irish family, Dublin Quakers. I came late from the Cathedral after setting up the exhibition to join her and her uncle Henry, the youngest of her late mother’s siblings. Explaining the project and exhibition I mentioned John Frederick White who died on the first day of Passchendaele working as a stretcher bearer in the RAMC. On hearing this, Henry said “Of course, Dad was a stretcher bearer at Passchendaele” It was something we did not know. As an Irishman, fighting in WW1 was uncertain especially as a Quaker. Had the visit been on another day this information might never have surfaced. Knowing the fate of John Frederick White and the conditions under which RAMC operated meant we understood just how heroic it was.

My grandfather served throughout WW1. He joined the 4th Batt Royal Welsh Fusilliers when war was declared, a few months before my mother was born and finished when the war ended. He fought on the Western Front in France and Flanders including the Somme and Passchendaele. He came home but managed to escape returning to the pit unlike every one of my uncles and male cousins. He  brought home three brass shell cases, three of the millions fired. These he turned into vases each decorated with ‘Cymru Am Byth’ and listing every single engagement he had fought in.

After his death, my aunts and cousins coveted these vases but Nain (Welsh for Nanny) would not contemplate parting with them. Until that is my mother, sister and I visited when I was 11. On the day of our departure, I expressed a liking for them and without hesitation Nain handed me the largest of the three saying “Then you have this Cariad!”

Only years later did I learn that this had caused a dreadful family row! Not only had Nain refused to discuss parting with them before,  not only had she given them to a child who could not begin to understand their importance, she had separated the three breaking the list that recorded Taids war! Of course they were right. I often wondered about the other two. Then came this project and a much greater understanding of what that record of combat truly meant.

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In recognition of the work undertaken to identify and commemorate men who participated in the First World War, Josh Brown and Donna Bish were invited to attend the service to mark the Armistice at Westminster Abbey on the evening of November 11th 2018 in the presence of HM The Queen, His Excellency the President of Germany, HM the Prince of Wales, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Prime Minister. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46168197