Pte W Rowlands, North Staffs and 16th Notts & Derby Regiment (Chatsworth Rifles), entitled to Silver Wound Badge, discharged insane.
Born in January 1884, William Rowlands of 24 Claremont Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne was a 'Derby man'; having attested his willingness to serve he was posted to the Army Reserve on 10 December 1915. He was aged 31 years and 11 month and a wholesale fruiterer by trade with a wife, Annie, née Robertson, whom he had married on 21 June 1915. He was mobilised on 1 November 1916. He would have been subject to medical examination, the records of which do not survive, however it appears that the Syphilis which he was suffering and which was to cut short his military career was sadly not diagnosed at the time. Upon posting to the North Staffordshire Regiment he was given the regimental number [3/]31569 and joined the 3rd Battalion at Wallsend.
After training, he was posted overseas to the 8th Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment on 21/22 January 1917. At 12 Infantry Base Depot he was part of a draft transferred to the 16th Sherwood Foresters (the Chatsworth Rifles) on 10 February 1917. His new number was 71540.
He joined the battalion on 16 February 1917, at which time, having just come out of support billets in Ypres, it was at 'E' Camp, Brandhoek. His first experience in the front line would have followed ten days later, in the form of a relatively quiet tour in the Left Zillebeke Sub-Section (Hooge). The month of March and the first half of April was similarly quiet for the battalion, although it continued to take part in tours of the front line. Then in mid-April the battalion was withdrawn for intensive training and working parties for what turned out to be the Third Battle of Ypres, July to November 1917. Within the training, particular emphasis was put on the platoon as a tactical unit and on assault rehearsals, and Pte Rowlands would have also fired on the rifle range whilst wearing his gas mask. Working parties included railway work and significant amounts of entrenching. This duty was interspersed with further tours in the line, beginning with an eventful week in the Hill Top sector starting 23 May and then Wieltje in June. The enemy were active with minenwerfers, artillery, snipers and gas, and a trench raid on Hill Top, to which the battalion returned for the final week of June, under increasingly heavy volumes of enemy fire. The final weeks before the attack were spent in training and battle practice at Serques, the battalion finally entering the forward area on the 28th of July.
This would have put Pte Rowlands in line to take part in the opening attack on 31 July, in which the battalion assaulted the German line between Hampshire Farm (a strongpoint, as was Kultur Farm) and Canadian Farm, successfully taking the German first and second lines. After a period of the day spent on road repair and carrying parties, the battalion was put in the line again to reinforce the lead attacking battalions who had gone forward through them to attack the rear defence lines. The battalion was to remain under heavy rain and shell-fire in positions exposed to the defending Germans for six days until relieved at 11.20pm on 5 August by the 1/5th Gloucesters.
Subsequent to the opening day of the great offensive, 31 July 1917, The Chatsworth Rifles were engaged in The Battle of the Menin Road Ridge (specifically the action at Bulgar Wood, where Corporal Ernest Alfred Egerton of the battalion, another former North Staffordshire man, won the Victoria Cross), and remained taking tours of duty in the line under conditions of wet, cold and regular shelling for the period of - although not actively taking part in - the Battle of Polygon Wood, and The Second Battle of Passchendaele. The worst of these were the positions Tower Hamlets, which the battalion occupied from mid-October, and Polderhoek, in mid-November, both of which were battle-scarred and inadequate to protect against the elements or enemy action.
On 23 November 1917, Pte Rowlands received the first adverse entry on his military history sheet when he received 6 days Field Punishment No.2 for being absent from a working party. The battalion would have been in Ridge Wood Camp at the time. This was the first in a short series of misdemeanours, possibly associated with the onset of the mental symptoms of his illness. On 8 January he was awarded a further 7 days Field Punishment No.2, this time for being absent from 30 December to 1 January and "losing by neglect his Rifle, Equipment and Kit". On the former date the battalion had just entered the line on the Steenbeek, west of St Julien in support for the Alberta sector, in relief of the 2nd Manchesters. A further three days FP.No.2 followed on 11 January 1918 for "improperly dressed on staff parade" (probably in Dambre Camp) before he was sent off on leave to the UK later in the month, never to return.
Pte Rowlands was sent home on 27 January 1918, with a view to being struck off strength of the BEF and put before a medical board for discharge. He was admitted to 1st Northern General Hospital Newcastle, where he reported 'headache, pains in body & legs, shooting artery pains'. His Wassermann test (a test for Syphilis) was strongly positive and, presumably due to his mental confusion, his statement that '[the problem] began in France 12 months ago but he did not go sick with it, was never under a doctor' was discounted. He spent some time at the Lord Derby Hospital, Warrington, where his report states that he was a 'vacant looking man who can give no connected account of himself, answers questions with the first words that come into his head...his speech is very slurring, his statements quite unreliable'. From there he was medically boarded and discharged due to sickness, on 15 June 1918, aged 34 years 5 months.
Being diagnosed with General Paresis (or Paralysis) of the Insane, 'aggravated by the present war', and 100% disabling, he was awarded a weekly pension of 27/6 and granted the Silver War Badge, Number 411980. Subsequently he was sent to asylum care, his medical records indicating that he required the constant care of another person.
He sadly died insane on 25 March 1919, his War Gratuity of £7 and financial effects of £19 going to his widow, Annie, later of 16 St Thomas Crescent, Newcastle.
