Colchester, Essex

In this series of posts on places where my ancestors once lived, we now travel across many counties, from Lancashire in the north-west of England to Colchester, in the south-east.

Colchester is one of the oldest towns in Britain. It has had a military presence since the Twentieth Victorious Valeria Legion established a garrison there in 43 AD, during the Roman conquest of Britain under Emperor Claudius. For a while it was the capital of Roman-occupied England, despite the best efforts of Queen Boudica to see them off. Over the centuries other armies followed in making Colchester their base. One end of the main street is still dominated by the great Norman keep, and the later castle, built on the mound of a Roman temple.

By the end of the 18th century, several barracks had been built in Colchester to house troops and cavalry regiments coming and going from wars on the continent. Wounded men were also brought to the military hospital in Colchester to recover. The townspeople were used to seeing the population of infantry and officers in the barracks swell in times of war, followed by an emptying out in peace time.

But they had probably never experienced anything like the influx of soldiers that occurred with the outbreak of World War 1. Volunteers flooded in. Two hundred men arrived in Colchester each day, to be trained as part of "Kitchener's Army" before being sent to the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East. At times there were as many soldiers in the town as local residents. The barracks couldn't house them all, so they were put in huts and tents, or even billeted with families.

Thomas Henry Ward goes to Colchester

Thomas Henry Ward
(Photo courtesy of M. Lucas)

As the war dragged on, the number of volunteers dwindled and in 1916 conscription was introduced. It's not clear whether my grandfather, Thomas Henry Ward, joined up as a volunteer in 1914 or found himself conscripted later on. But whatever the case, he would have been in his early thirties when he travelled by train to Colchester, to join the Army Ordnance Corp.

He would no doubt have found the flat Essex countryside, with its broad fields of wheat and other crops, quite unfamiliar after living in the hilly moorlands of eastern Lancashire all his life, among the mills and factories. Colchester itself was a pleasant, prosperous-looking town, with hardly a mill or a smoke stack in sight.

Before the war, engineering works such as Paxman's, which made steam engines and boilers, were among the main employers in Colchester. They turned to making armaments during the war. The presence of the army also helped keep a brewery and bottling works in business. But Thomas, by all accounts, was not a great drinker. A rather quiet, perhaps even shy man, he was also older than many of the recruits around him.

The Beales family in Colchester

One Sunday afternoon (according to my father) Thomas was invited to have tea with a local family. The Beales were members of the Salvation Army, which had a strong presence in Colchester from the late 1880s, although it was not always well received. The family made it their ministry to look out for lonely-looking soldiers who were far from home

William and Eliza Beales had lived in Colchester all their adult lives. Except for Eliza's mother, Susan, who was from Australia, all their forebears came from villages around Colchester. Eliza's parents, David and Susan Whybrew, came to live near the Beales in Colchester after David retired from active service in the army.

Rosina Beales

The Beales' daughter Rosina, still in her late teens, may well have been dressed in her Salvation Army uniform when Thomas Henry, in his army uniform, met her for the first time over Sunday afternoon tea. Or perhaps not - family lore says nothing about what they were wearing. They would have had little time to get to know each other before Thomas went off with his battalion to serve overseas, but they evidently managed to keep their friendship going during the war.

In 1921, after Thomas was discharged from the army, they married at St Botolph's Anglican church in Colchester. It was then Rosina's turn to find herself in a strange environment when she and Thomas went back to his home village of Milnrow in Lancashire. She was leaving behind her Salvation Army roots as well as her childhood home in Essex.

Thomas Henry died several years before I was born, but my grandmother Rosina still lived in Milnrow when I was growing up. As a child I knew that she was born "down south" somewhere, and used to belong to the Salvation Army, but she seemed a natural part of what I called "home". It wasn't until I began researching my family's history that it occurred to me that Grandma Rosina must have undergone quite a cultural change when she married. How long did it take her to adjust? How did it affect her? Unfortunately I never had chance to ask her such questions.

Rosina's parents, William and Eliza Beales, continued living in Colchester for the rest of their lives, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and members of their wider family. Their role as officers in the Salvation Army and members of the Salvation Army band shaped their daily lives as much as their location.

In the next few posts I'll look at some of the Essex villages where the Beales and Whybrew families came from.

This series of 13 slides by Xav Marseilles shows what Colchester looked like 100 years ago, overlaid with more recent images. It appeared in the Daily Mail, 2 January 2017. (Click on the photo or the link above to see all the slides).







You can find out more about Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool, available on Amazon and other online books stores

William James Beales (b 1897) in World War 1

While I was looking for the war-time records of Granddad Thomas Henry Ward, I also had a look for those of William James Beales, his future brother-in-law. Because his name is fairly unusual, William's Medal Roll Index card was relatively easy to find. As an added bonus it also contained his address at 13 Campion Road, Colchester.

William James Beales and his sister Rosina

The card is full of abbreviations which I'm still trying to interpret. What it shows is that William joined the Essex Yeomanry initially, then transferred to the Royal Reserve regiment of Cavalry and finally to the Machine Gun Corps (with a change of regimental number each time).

He must have remained in the army beyond the end of the war in 1918 because he received an Indian General Service medal, which was awarded to everyone who served in the so-called "Third Anglo-Afghan War" of 1919.

The Machine Gun Corps was formed in 1915 and included infantry, cavalry and motor units. The Essex Yeomanry were associated with the 8th Cavalry Brigade of the 3rd Cavalry division, though it's unclear if this was William's unit. According to the website Golden Map

The MGC saw action in all the main theatres of war, including France, Belgium, Palestine,Mesopotamia, Egypt, Salonika, East Africa and Italy. In its short history the MGC gained an enviable record for heroism as a front line fighting force. Indeed, in the latter part of the war, as tactics changed to defence in depth, it commonly served well in advance of the front line. It had a less enviable record for its casualty rate. Some 170,500 officers and men served in the MGC with 62,049 becoming casualties, including 12,498 killed, earning it the nickname 'the Suicide Club'.

It would be fascinating to know whether William Beales and Thomas Ward served together at any time during the war. 

At last - a regiment for Thomas Henry Ward

Over the past couple of years I've searched through the military records on Ancestry umpteen times, looking for some clue as to which regiment Thomas Henry Ward belonged to during his army service in World War 1. I found dozens of Thomas H Wards, and hundreds more plain Thomas Wards, but none of the records I looked at had enough information to identify them as the correct Thomas. Even knowing that he served in Mesopotamia and India didn't help.

Obverse of the
Victory medal

But this week I came across a card in the Medal Rolls Index for a Thomas Henry Ward who served in the Army Ordnance Corps (AOC). And there on the back of the card was an address (which is fairly unusual on such cards) - 17 Clifton St, Milnrow. So, now I know his regiment! What I don't know is how I missed seeing the  address on the card before. Perhaps I overlooked it, although it's quite clear. The card doesn't come up using Milnrow as a keyword or place of residence.

The Medal Rolls Index contains millions of cards. Almost every soldier who served overseas in World War 1 was awarded some sort of medal, often more than one. Each soldier had an Index card on which the army listed what medals they were entitled to, along with details such as their regiment(s) and regimental numbers, where they served and so on. Most cards contain very few details.

Reverse of the
Victory medal

The Index card for Thomas Henry Ward shows that he was a private in the Army Ordnance Corps (which became the RAOC from 1918), regimental number 029248 (1). He was awarded a Victory medal (not to be confused with the Victoria Cross!) and the British War medal. The Great War website gives details about these medals.

There is also an entry for the GSM - General Service Medal - with a clasp for service in NW Persia. Then for some reason the reference to the GSM has been crossed out and the word "ineligible" added, but leaving the words about the clasp for NW Persia intact. The GSM was usually awarded for service beyond 1918, with clasps for various campaigns such as the one in North West Persia in 1920. The clasp was never awarded without a medal. I'm still trying to decipher from the various handwritten notes and numbers whether Granddad received the GSM and clasp or not.

On the back of the card is a reference to Hilsea, near Portsmouth, which was an RAOC depot  from 1918 and their barracks from 1921. This is followed by more letters and numbers which I've yet to decipher, and then "3.11.23 GSM clasp". I think the reference to 1923 is the date on which the medal was awarded or delivered. Below that is the Milnrow address. So overall it looks possible that Granddad was not demobbed in 1918 but continued on in the army until at least 1920.

(1)Unfortunately I don't think the copyright rules allow me to put up a picture of the card itself, but I can send a link if anyone wants it. 

Army boots

As a footnote (no pun intended) to my post yesterday, I came across this paragraph in an article on army salvage practices during WW1:

"Boots were even more important than clothes. After less than a fortnight of fighting, Sir John French's men were in desperate need of boots. When trench. warfare settled in its long course, many regimental officers either started repairing shops of their own or engaged contractors to keep the battalion well shod. The boot, however, was too important a thing to be left to individual officers. On it depended the marching power of the Army and for this reason it engaged the concern of the Commander-in-Chief, who in June, 1915, appointed Major-General Sir John Steevens; the Army salvage expert, to organise large central repair shops.
One was opened in Calais in the autumn of 1915, another was founded at Mudros during the Gallipoli operations and afterwards removed to Salonika. Later a shop was erected at Alexandria for the army of Palestine; while the army of Mesopotamia had its boots repaired at Basra. Other works were organised in England and Scotland, and these, with the Calais shop, were at last saving 150,000. pairs of boots each week. 

Instead of the Army having to purchase new boots at the rate of a quarter of a million pairs a week, only 100,000 were required. Large as was the economy in money, this was of secondary importance. The great thing was the saving in the stock of available leather, upon which all the Allies constantly needed largely to draw. Moreover the British manufacturing plant for Army boot-making, when partly released from service for the New Army, was able to work for millions of allied troops."(1)

Perhaps Granddad Thomas Henry's boot and shoe repairing skills were greatly appreciated by the army. I wonder if he got to work in the repair shop in Basra?

(1) quoted from "The Garbage of War - the great work of salving war material" by Edward Wright, found at http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Garbage_of_War/Garbage_of_War_01.htm 

Remembrance day - Thomas Henry Ward

British troops on the march in the dessert c 1916
(from the National Army Museum)

Today, November 11, is Remembrance Day, so it seems fitting to say something about the war-time experience of our grandfather, Thomas Henry Ward. Though he survived the war of 1914-1918 and went on to marry Grandma, his army service must have remained a significant part of his future life and is worth recording and remembering.

Unfortunately, without knowing what regiment he was in, it's difficult to trace his actual records. Many service records from the First World War were destroyed in a fire after the war, and those that are available (mostly medal cards) often don't provide enough information to distinguish one Thomas Ward from another.

However, I do know from Dad that Granddad was in India and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) during the war. A bit of internet research on sites such as The Long Long Trail suggests that this narrows down the possibilities.

Only one British Army unit, the 13th (Western) Division, was involved in the campaign in Mesopotamia. As far as I can tell, the battalions that made up this Division never spent time in India. However most of the troops in 'Mespot' came from India as part of the Indian Expeditionary Force "D". The majority were Indian-born members of the British Indian Army, but some were from British Army regiments who had previously been stationed in India as part of the Territorial Forces.

British troops marching in Mesopotamia
(from Library of Congress, author unknown)

It seems that many of the Territorial Forces who were in India at the beginning of the war were replaced by battalions of less experienced volunteers, many of them older men, in order to free up the regular army men for service elsewhere. As the war went on, some of these units were themselves recruited to fight in Mesopotamia and were replaced by other Territorial regiments from England. (See the entry from "Alex" on this genealogy forum).

Given that Thomas Henry would have been close to 32 years old when the war began, he may well have been one of these 'older men' who were sent to India and then recruited for service in Mesopotamia. The other possibility is that he simply had contact with Indian troops while serving in Mesopotamia as part of the 13th (Western) Division. Either way, it's hard to imagine how a man who had spent all his life in small English mill towns would have adjusted to conditions in Mesopotamia.

60 pounder gun firing in Mesopotamia
By Varges Ariel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The parallels between the war in Mesopotamia in 1915-1918 and the war in Iraq in this century are many. In 1914 the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany, had declared a Holy War on the Allies (Britain, France and Russia). Britain sent troops to Mesopotamia in 1915 to secure their oil supply line from the Anglo Persian Oil Company, and to maintain British Army prestige among Indian Muslims who might be tempted to join the jihad. Over 600,000 Indians as well as British army troops eventually served in the Mesopotamian campaign.

After securing the port of Basra, which had some strategic value, the army was ordered to march on up the Tigris and take Baghdad, which had no real value to Britain.  In December 1915 the British-Indian garrison at Kut-al-amara came under seige and it proved impossible to relieve the 8,000 or so men stationed there, who were taken captive in April 1916. Eventually Baghdad was captured, but at great cost in lives. The conditions in which the British and Indian troops found themselves were truly appalling - searing heat and dust in summer, bitter cold, flooding and mud in winter, along with insects and vermin, disease and dehydration, poor supplies and inadequate medical support.

Hospital Ship 1 on the Tigris c 1916
By E. E. Jones [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

These  diaries written by a doctor who served in Mesopotamia and a soldier transferred from the Territorial Forces in India give some insights into what it was like. Around 92,000 British and Indian soldiers died (including Robert Palmer, the soldier who wrote the diary), most of them from infections and disease.

Fortunately Thomas Henry returned to England with no lasting physical injuries, but who knows what mental scars he and others like him carried.

(More pictures and information can be found at
http://warpost.blogsome.com/photo-archive-mesopotamian-expeditionary-force/)

UPDATE; see At last - a regiment for Thomas Henry Ward