Pte W Rowlands, North Staffs and 16th Notts & Derby Regiment (Chatsworth Rifles), entitled to Silver War Badge, discharged insane.

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 Then in mid-April the battalion was withdrawn for intensive training and working parties for what turned out to be the Third Battle of Ypres, July to November 1917.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.

Pte Peter Nicholls, Essex Regiment, Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment)

Peter Nicholls was born in Ponders End to Richard, a brickworker and general labourer, and Sarah (Anne) Nicholls in around 1889.

By 1911 Peter was one of four siblings living at home, the others being Richard, Sarah Ann, and Annie. The family lived at 44 Falcon Road, Ponders End, Middlesex. Peter worked at home on his own account, selling wood. His brother Richard was a general labourer, like their father, whilst Sarah Ann was a lamp maker for an electric lamp manufacturer and Annie was still at school.

Peter may have originally been in a Territorial battalion of the Essex Regiment. Certainly, his Essex Regiment number of 375522 (as recorded on the medal roll), is in the number range 375,001 to 400,000 associated with the regiment's 16th Battalion. This was a Territorial formation created on 1 January 1917 from the Essex-based 66th Provisional Battalion (made up from personnel of the 2nd and 3rd line Territorial Battalions not available for overseas service and soldiers of low medical categories) and disbanded in December that year.

After training, presumably with the 16th battalion at Fleet and then Colchester, Peter was part of a draft going out to join the 13th Battalion, Essex Regiment on or about 17 June 1917. He was subsequently transferred, probably whilst still at Infantry base depot in France, to 1st London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) on 9 July 1917 and then attached to the 1st Royal Fusiliers, 17th Brigade, 24th Division. At around this time the battalion was at Henneveux training for the forthcoming Ypres offensive, and Pte Nicholls is likely to have been amongst the group of 80 from the 13th Essex who joined the battalion there on 13 July. After a commanding officer's inspection the following day, the battalion participated in a practice attack on the 16th, and then left for Senninghem a day later, marching by stages to Steenvorde (where they had a CO's inspection in Fighting Order and battalion sports) and then on to Micmac Camp, finally being distributed between the line (1 platoon each of 'A' and 'C' Companies, swapping with the remaining platoon the following night) and the Canada and Hedge Street tunnels nearby, on the 28th.

The battalion took part in the Battle of Pilkem Ridge, the opening attack of Third Ypres, on the morning of 31 July. Having left the British lines under cover of night, the battalion advanced with the British barrage at 3.50am. After hard fighting under machine gun and sniper fire, which took a particular toll on runners and stretcher-bearers, a line was secured around 500 yards west of Bassilbeek, before the battalion (now reorganised into two companies of 25 and 64 men respectively) was relieved by the 3rd Rifle Brigade and put to consolidating a line of strongpoints along the edge of Bodmin Copse*. The battalion incurred a total of 283 casualties in the month, the vast majority on 31 July.

Pte Nicholls was reported as killed in action on 22 August 1917. At this time the 1st Royal Fusiliers were back in the line at Bodmin Copse, a little way south and east of Sanctuary Wood. A small raid was carried out by the battalion on 22 August but no fatalities were reported, which suggests that the CWGC records are out by a day and he was instead the fatal casualty incurred by the battalion during its relief from the trenches under heavy bombardment on the following day, 23 August 1917.

The majority of his financial effects, including his War Gratuity, were made over to his widow, Alice M Nicholls. He is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

The following account of the action is taken from "The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War":

'The 1st attacked at zero with the 12th Battalion 200 yards in the rear. The leading companies as usual clung closely to the barrage. A number of casualties were sustained as the men crossed the valley in which lies the sunken road towards the eastern end of Shrewsbury Wood, but the Germans did not attempt to stand until the strong point south of Jeffrey Avenue was reached. This trench runs from the north-eastern face of Clonmel Copse to the northern edge of Shrewsbury Wood. At this point the battalion were held up until Lieutenant Flack's party rushed it. Flack knocked out the machine gun with a rifle grenade, and was subsequently awarded a bar to the M.C. for this service. This part of the line was then consolidated. C Company, under Captain Leeming, reached the trench on the south-western face of Bodmin Copse, and here he was killed. The German snipers were very active, and C Company was deprived of an efficient leader. This company on the left of the advance alone maintained its direction. A very sustained fire had been kept up from Lower Star Post, in the heart of Shrewsbury Wood, and it was owing to this, apparently, that the battalion on the ist Royal Fusiliers' right swerved, causing the Fusiliers' right company also to swerve.

...

That night a final line was established some 500 yards west of Bassillebeek and held by the 1st Battalion, the 12th, with the 3rd Rifle Brigade and the Leinsters. On this day, the 1st Battalion sustained 277 casualties, 12 being officers, 3 of whom were killed.

...

Fighting was still in progress on the line south of Shrewsbury Wood, and the conditions at the front were very terrible. Many wounded were still lying about in shell-holes as the stretcher bearers had suffered so many casualties. Seven officers and 69 other ranks were sent up to the 1st Battalion from the transport lines on August 2nd, and on the next day they moved back with the 12th Battalion to Micmac Camp. '