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from Daily
Mail Saturday 23 June 2001
Revealed - the
Chums own story (cont'd)
Maurice Venting was a
Yorkshireman whose brother Barker survived the war and named his son after
him. Now 76, Maurice the nephew lives in Hampshire.
He said: ‘My father
rarely spoke about Maurice or the war. They didn’t tend to in those days
and I can’t blame him.
‘Maurice went missing
before I was born and no one ever knew what became of him. I became my
father’s memory of his brother. I think it was his way of dealing with the
grief.’
WILLIAM Buckley,
78-year-old son-in-law of the late Maurice Venting, added: ‘We are
extremely relieved that his body might have been found. He’s been missing
for such a long time now.
‘At least the family
may now know what happened to him. We would like him to have a decent
burial.’
Charles Smewin was a
craftsman from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Maude Smewin, his niece, said
he was 28 when he was killed, and been planning to marry before he went to
France. ‘He had been making furniture for his wedding. I was only young
when he went missing but I know everyone was very upset when it happened. He
was the pet of the family since he was the youngest. Finding out about the
grave has come as something of a shock.’
Lewis Holloway was among
13 brothers and sisters who grew up with their parents, Lewis and Lucy, In
Kettering, Northamptonshire. The soldier, who was left-handed and used a
left-handed revolver, was married with a daughter, Mabel - but never saw her
grow up to become a teacher.
His nephew George
Holloway, 86, who fought with the Royal Artillery in World War II and still
lives in Kettering, said: ‘I was a very young lad when he went off to
fight along with my father, William. ‘They fought in different regiments.
My father went to Tripoli and came back all right, but Lewis went missing.
‘Personally I think
that when they find things such as this grave they should just let it lie
and not touch it. It just brings up painful memories for people.’
Others about whom some
detail has emerged include Edmund Tasker, who enlisted on January 12 1915,
aged 21, as Private 1262. He lived with his seven brothers and sisters in
Cleethorpes.
And Sidney Woods, a
19-year-old groom who became Private 581, lived at Boston with four brothers
and sisters. Other Chums who went missing on April 9 were: Arthur Alcock,
from Leamington; Thomas Henry Bates, Walsall; George Bedgood, Middlesex;
Henry Foulds, Bradford; Robert Stevenson Gould, Durham;
Charles Henry Hall,
Horncastle; Arthur Harris, Boston; Harry Holland, Irlam; Thomas Kirsopp,
Durham; Jesse Larder, Yarborough; Percy Thomas Miles, Edlesborough; Wilfred
North, Great Wyrley; John Joseph Wickes, Leamington.
MANY of the early Chums
were unmarried young men from large, working- class families. With their
short-back-and-sides haircuts and matching height (military records show
that most of the Lost Chums were just over 5ff 4in) they even looked like
brothers in arms.
The exception was
Wyllard Fleetwood Cocks, born in France on September 10, 1891 to wealthy
British parents. The strapping six-footer was educated at University School,
Hastings, apd Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was studying for a BA in
mathematics when war broke out in 1914.
Cocks applied to join
the 3rd Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment on February 9, 1915, with a
reference from his Cambridge tutor, the scientist and philosopher William
Dampier Whetham (later Sir William Dampier). He spent a month in France but
was sent home on sick leave in 1915, suffering from rheumatism and fever.
He rejoined the 3rd
Lincs in November that year — but harboured a secret ambition befitting a
dashing young officer.
In December he applied
to join the Royal Flying Corps, stating somewhat hopefully: ‘I have had
experience in driving cars and have a fair knowledge of their engines.’
His application was accepted but appears to have become lost in the
bureaucracy of war and by April 1917 he was an officer with the 10th Lincs.
The official
notification of his death simply states: ‘Died from wounds; Place of
burial not known.’ The only personal item returned to his mother was a
pair of field glasses.
It is this curious lack
of personal possessions and identification marks among the 20 bodies in the
Arras grave that has added to the mystery of the Lost Chums. Now it will
also make the task of identifying them desperately difficult.
The most likely
explanation is that the personal effects — pictures of family and
sweethearts, dog tags, pocket-watches and penknives - were taken from them
and kept safe until they could be sent back to England with a letter to next
of kin.
Some probably arrived
home via surviving friends — records show that Private Tasker’s wallet,
photographs, steel mirror and wristwatch somehow got back to Cleethorpes.
But perhaps in the chaos that dominated the almost ceaseless exchange of
artillery fire, the official collection of goods was lost or blown up.
Almost certainly,
weapons, equipment and re-usable material - even down to cap badges —
would have been salvaged and passed on to other soldiers.
Such were the casualties
in World War I that if every new regimental recruit had been given a
brand-new cap badge, there would have been thousands of people tied up at
home doing nothing but manufacturing the metal to make them.
Roy Hemington, of the
War Graves Commission in France, said it was unusual, but not unique, for so
few clues to be found. ‘Out of 24 sets of remains, we have four badges,’
he said. ‘Normally if we find bodies, even those that have been blown up,
we find a few personal effects.’
There had been previous
graves in which nothing else emerged, he said. ‘But except for their boots
and a few scraps of uniform, these remains had been completely picked clean.’
Speculation that the men
might have been shot as deserters after having their regimental insignia
stripped from their uniforms is demonstrably unfounded.
Shrapnel and German
machine-gun bullets were found with some of the sets of remains, and several
had obviously fatal injuries. At least two had large sections missing from
the skull, and two more were only partial skeletons — clearly victims of
an explosion. Peter Chapman, author of Grimsby’s Own: The Story of the
Chums, believes they were tragic casualties of British guns that were
providing a rolling barrage under which they were to advance.
He said that a single
gun is known to have been wrongly aimed. ‘Its shells were falling short. I
believe it was this gun that killed these men.’
Arras archeologist Alain
Jacques, whose team uncovered the bodies, said: ‘The fact that they had
been arranged so theatrically suggests to us very strongly that they were
from one unit.
‘By arranging them arm
in arm, their comrades were saying, "These people were friends".
All the skeletons were
found near the unfortunately-named ‘Joyous Trench’ (others were named
Jingle, Jumble and Jolly). Historians know from battle maps that a
regimental aid post was set up there.
The two strongest
theories are that the bodies could have been laid one by one in an open
trench as they died on a makeshift operating table or waiting for medical
care; or that all 20 were recovered from the spot where the shell killed
them, then formally buried.
Sadly, however,
compiling a conclusive account of what happened to the Lost Chums might yet
prove impossible.
A British Army forensic
team will examine the remains in the next few days and attempt to match them
to any dental and medical records of 10th Lincoln soldiers known to have
been killed at Arras.
DNA testing is feasible,
but is normally carried out only if there is already some evidence of
identity, such as a dog tag with the remains. plus Army-record details such
as height and build for comparison.
Without successful
identification, the remains will be reburied as ‘unknown soldiers’ with
full military honours at a nearby cemetery already filled with hundreds of
names from a lost generation.
Hence, the full picture
might never emerge. In the meantime, 21 families have a haunting photograph
- and a few more clues to the fallen Chums of April 9, 1917.
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