Back to Canada on the ‘Old Reliable’

Almost a fortnight ago, in Hospital Blues, I wrote about my grandfather’s wounding at the Battle of Arras in August 1918, his subsequent recuperation back in England, and the desolating loss of his bride of one year, within days of his arriving home from the hospital.


1. Sergeant Leslie Payne (at left) and another, unidentified CEF sergeant aboard the HMT Olympic, January 1919 [1]
Among my aunt’s collection of family photos inherited from her father are a group of loose prints which include a series of eight snapshots taken on board a ship, some including soldiers in Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) uniforms. That they relate to my grandfather is clear since he appears in one of them, garbed in standard issue greatcoat and cap, similar to how he was in the image used in my previous article, standing in the snow, one hand in his pocket. The other soldier, also a sergent, is unidentified, but he looks vaguely familiar, so it may be that I've seen him previously in another of my grandfather's photos.


It is clear that the remainder of the images form a series taken on the same journey from the purple batch number "5 9" stamped on the back of the prints. I have assumed for some time that they were taken by Leslie or a friend on the journey back across the Atlantic to Canada immediately prior to his demobilisation in early 1919.


Leslie Payne's CEF Active Service Form, B.103
from The CEF Paper Trail
Upon returning to the Canadian Machine Gun Depot (CMGD) at Seaford in Sussex in late October, and with the war ending a couple of weeks later, duties must have been light. After another month there, Leslie was transferred to Kinmel Park, near Rhyl in North Wales – as shown by the final entry on his Active Service Form above - in advance of his repatriation to Canada.


Camp at Kinmel Park, early 1919
Marc Leroux, on his excellent Canadian Great War Project web site, described the conditions at Kinmel Park.

For the 17,400 troops at Kinmel Park, conditions were far from ideal. The days were filled with exercises that they thought meaningless, medical examinations, route marches and military discipline and training. For them the war was over and they didn’t see the need. They were anxious to return to Canada, not just to their families, but they also realized that the first soldiers home would have the pick of the available jobs, and no one wanted to come home from the war and be unemployed. At Kinmel Park, there was the military bureaucracy to overcome. Troops awaiting transport had to fill in some 30 different forms with approximately 360 questions. The food they were fed was bad; it had been compared to “pigswill”. At night, the troops had access to “Tin Town” a nearby group of shops and pubs that had inflated their prices to take advantage of the, comparatively, well paid Canadian soldier. After a month of these rates, many soldiers were broke.

HMT Olympic, c. 1919
Image courtesy of Library and Archives Canada
Leslie was one of the fortunate ones. Not long after New Year he was one of a large contingent who entrained for Southampton, where they boarded the HMT Olympic, sister ship of the ill-fated Titanic, according to his service records, around the 9th to 11th January 1919. Originally launched in 1911 and described at the time as the "largest vessel in the world," the Olympic had been commandeered by the British Admiralty and extensively refitted at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast to carry 6000 troops. The image above shows the "Old Reliable" as she became known during her wartime service, displaying a "dazzle" paint scheme and with soldiers lining the railings [2].


2.

3. On board the HMT Olympic, January 1919
The two images above, from my grandfather's set, show what appears to be the foredeck of the ship with soldiers standing around and lined up at the railings. To the right, in the second photo, are some buildings which demonstrate that the ship is berthed in port somewhere.


RMS Olympic berthed in New York, undated
This image shows the foredeck of the Olympic, when berthed in New York a few years earlier, probably prior to her being pressed into service for the war effort. The similarities are striking.


Wounded Canadians on Olympic entering Halifax, October 1916 [2]
This view is from David Gray's comprehensive study of the Olympic's service during the war, well worth a read if just for the first-hand accounts of living conditions aboard [2].


Canadian Troops Embarking for Canada on HMT Olympic

The still above is from a YouTube version of a clip from the Canadian film archive, Images of a Forgotten War, the original of which can be viewed here. About 45 seconds into the clip, the camera pans across the exact view of the Olympic's foredeck shown in Leslie's two photos, leaving me in no doubt that Leslie and friends were on the Olympic.


4. On board the HMT Olympic, January 1919 [1]
In these two photos from my grandfather's trip, possibly taken in opposing directions, four funnels and some of the lifeboats can be seen. Following the disastrous sinking of her sister ship the Titanic in 1912, and the public outrage at there not being enough lifeboats for all of the passengers and crew, the Olympic had been extensively rebuilt and lifeboats were now available for all. Presumably the later 1914-1915 refit, which included the addition of "a 4.7-inch gun at the bow and a 3-inch gun at the stern" also supplemented the number of lifeboats on board. The large gun seen in the photo at the head of this article must be one of the six 6-inch guns which were installed as added protection in early 1917.


5. On board the HMT Olympic, January 1919 [1]
In the background of this shot can be seen the spires of two churches. I wonder if it might be possible to identify these, and therefore decide whether the photographs were taken in Southampton docks, prior to their departure, or in Halifax, after their arrival. My insticts suggest the photos would most likely have been taken soon after their arrival on board, before the novelty of shipboard life had worn off. A postcard of the Olympic and Mauretania berthed in Southampton (here) has a similar church spire in the background, but I'm sure there were church spires in Halifax too.


6.
A further two views show more detail from the deck of the ship, including funnels, cranes, ventilation shafts, railings, lifeboats, benches, cables, pipes and plenty more to delight the naval enthusiast.


7.
This is my favourite photograph from the entire series - a real shipboard shot. Sadly, there are no more in which my grandfather or his friend can be identified.


8.
My guess is that this last photo was taken shortly after they left the Ocean Pier at Southampton Docks, as the Olympic was sailing down Southampton Water towards The Solent, and hence to the Channel, the North Atlantic, and Halifax. An expert in ships of the period might be able to identify the vessel being passed. Coincidentally, Larry Burgus posted a photograph of a very similar ship to this, one in which his father was sent to the war, as a Sepia Saturday article a couple of weeks ago.


Portion of the HMT Olympic's passenger manifest
Southampton-Halifax 18th January 1919
After a trans-Atlantic crossing of about 8 to 10 days, they arrived at Halifax on January 18th at 11.30 am. The passenger manifest (above) includes three other sergeants from the CMGD, both from Winnipeg, and I wonder if one of these could be the soldier pictured with Leslie. They are:
- 440699 Sgt. Valmore Orville Forest, CMGD, enlisted 53rd Bn, Winnipeg
- 859574 Sgt. Charles Murray, CMGD, enlisted 179th Bn, Winnipeg
- 531662 A/Sgt John Mackney Roe, CMGD, enlisted 11th Fld Amb., Winnipeg

Post Script 14 June 2011


Plan of HMT Olympic showing photo locations
(Click image for larger version)
Image © and courtesy of Ralph Currell
This plan of the HMT Olympic, overlaid with the positions and fields of view of my grandfather's photographs, was very kindly sent to me by Ralph Currell, who has an interest in the ship's wartime career.

As might be imagined, due to wartime restrictions on photography there are many areas that are poorly documented, such as the armament, extra life rafts, and so forth. The images on your blog show a number of details that don't often appear in photographs ... they mostly pertain to the armament added to the ship during the war. If you look at my drawing you can see there are six guns (four forward and two on the after part of the ship). Your photos show an interesting stage where the forward guns have been removed (you can barely see one of the deck mountings in cllpayne21.jpg) but the after ones are still in place (as seen in cllpayne20.jpg). The shots of the lifeboats are also instructive. Because of the large numbers of troops carried, the "Olympic" had quite a few collapsible boats and rafts added to her ordinary civilian outfit, and these photos give some clues as to where they were stowed on deck.

You'll notice the second photo (cllpayne21.jpg) is marked as "mirrored". That particular photo is reversed left-to-right -- presumably whoever originally made the print put the negative upside-down ... Most of the photos seem to have been made while the "Olympic" was in port, but cllpayne26.jpg shows the lifeboat davits swung outboard, suggesting the ship is underway.

One curious thing I noticed about the unknown steamer (cllpayne27.jpg) is that the ship is "dressed" with flags running fore and aft via the masthead. I wonder if she was saluting the "Olympic's" arrival, or if it was due to some other festive occasion ... Regarding the photo of the smaller ship, it would probably be difficult to identify. It looks like a fairly typical cargo steamer, of which there would have been many in service. I can't make out any funnel markings that would identify the owners. The landscape in the background might give some clue as to the location though.

Many thanks Ralph, for the interesting information, and the image, which certainly does help to imagine his time on board. It must have been pretty cramped, with all those additional passengers.

References

[1] Eight photographs taken aboard HMT Olympic, January 1919, Loose paper prints, approx. 64 x 42 mm, Collection of Barbara Ellison.

[2] Gray, David R. (2002) Carrying Canadian Troops: The Story of RMS Olympic as a First World War Troopship, in Canadian Military History, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 2002, pp. 54-70.

[3] RMS Olympic, from Wikipedia.

Sepia Saturday 75: Hospital Blues

Alan Burnett’s photo prompt for this week’s edition of Sepia Saturday is a most atmospheric postcard view of the interior of a building in Oxford, taken from the collection of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Archives. Forgive me if I reproduce a portion of it here, but it is particularly germane to my own submission.


Although the precise location is not immediately evident, it seems to be an orchestra room in the Town Hall, with a large pipe organ forming a grand backdrop. There are eighteen men seated and standing around the room, apparently watching the final play in a game of snooker or billiards. Apart from the postcard’s caption, which refers to the 3rd Southern General Hospital, the main clue to who these men are lies in their clothing. Six of the men are wearing ordinary suits, the remaining twelve are garbed in what are generally termed “hospital blues.”


An image of this postcard view is included within the Oxfordshire County Council’s Photographic Archive, the location described as St Aldate’s, Oxford, and a further view which includes the billiards table on the stage in the background demonstrates that the entire Town Hall was converted, even the stalls. The Woodrow Wilson Archive has a similar view with somewhat better definition. A post on the Great War Forum suggests that the Town Hall Section had 205 beds reserved for malaria cases amongst the Other Ranks. The single stripe on the arm of the man about to strike the ball with his cue confirms that he was a Lance Corporal, and indeed an “other rank.”


"I look pretty thin, Eh!"
Paper print, Collection of Barbara Ellison, Coloured by Andre Hallam
My grandfather Charles Leslie Lionel Payne (1892-1975) and his younger brother Harold Victor Payne (1898-1921) both spent time wearing hospital blues. My grandfather served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), having immigrated to Canada in 1912, initially with the Canadian Army Service Corps (CASC) and then with the Canadian Machine Gun Corps (CMGC). Harold joined the British Army in England towards the end of the war and served with the Tank Corps. The photograph above, accurately coloured by Andre Hallam with the expert historical assistance of various members of the Great War Forum, shows Harold (sitting at centre) and friends wearing hospital blues at an unknown location. “I look pretty thin, Eh!” is handwritten in pencil on the reverse.


"Wounded Soldiers - I've met 'em. Yes sir."
Paper print, Collection of Barbara Ellison
Unfortunately his British Army service documents did not survive the Blitz - some 60% of the British Army’s Great War service records were destroyed by German bombs in 1940, and the remainder badly damaged – so it is difficult to be sure of his movements. A postcard sent to his family in Derby in November 1919 shows that he was then "in Cologne awaiting demob[ilization]" from the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR), was “quite well” and recorded hopefully, “guess I shan’t be long now.” I suspect that he took ill shortly after, before he could be demobilised. He died on 1 May 1921 at Derby. His mother was devastated, and although she would outlive him by a decade, I get the impression that she never really recovered from the shock. I have yet to order his death certificate, which may provide clues to his illness, and state whether or not he was still in the Army at that time.


Sgt. Leslie Payne, Winter 1918/1919
Paper print, Collection of Barbara Ellison
Sgt. Leslie Payne, CMGC, Winter 1918/19, in England or Canada
My grandfather’s CEF service records, on the other hand, have survived more or less intact although, sadly, I have no photographs of him wearing hospital blues. The portrait above, in which he wears his army greatcoat adorned with sergeant’s stripes, was probably taken in the Winter of 1918/19, after his recuperation had ended. I obtained a copy of his records from the Library & Archives of Canada some years ago. From this treasure trove of shorthand scribblings, indecipherable abbreviations and obtuse acronyms, and together with transcripts of the CMG Corps history and the War Diaries for his unit, I was eventually able to piece together a detailed itinerary of his movements.


Constance May Hogg, Christmas 1913
Postcard, Collection of Barbara Ellison
By the spring of 1918, my grandfather had been in the Canadian Army for almost three and a half years, two and a half years of this on the Western Front, and two years as a machine gunner. He had fought at the Battles of St. Eloi Craters (April 1916), Mount Sorrel (June 1916), Flers-Courcelette (September 1916), Vimy Ridge (April 1917), Lens (June 1917) and Passchendaele (November 1917) and appears to have survived unscathed – at least physically - with not a single day of sickness or other misadventure recorded. During a period of rest and recuperation Leslie was granted two weeks of leave on 26th November, and he lost no time in heading home. Four days later, having been granted permission to do so by his Commanding Officer, he married his sweetheart “Con” at Chester, and was back with his unit by 14th December.


Canon de 380 m/m capturé par les Australiens près de Chuignes et destiné au bombardement d'Amiens
Postcard with 1930 postmark, Collection of Barbara Ellison
On 20th April 1918, as part of the overall reorganization of the CMGC being undertaken at that time, Leslie was promoted to the rank of Sergeant, and thus put in charge of a machine gun section, comprising two Vickers machine guns with crews. On 9 July he was sent to the Canadian Corps School on a four week long training course. He probably returned to his unit just in time to participate in the very successful Battle of Amiens, on 8th, 9th and 10th August.


AMIENS - AUG 11 1918 - STATION PLATFORM BUFFET
Paper doily, Collection of Barbara Ellison
No. 2 Company of the 2nd Battalion CMGC was relieved and withdrawn from the line into reserve at Caix, allowing Leslie and his crew to enjoy the luxury of real food in Amiens on the evening of 11th August. After a week of rest, during which time the ranks were brought back up to strength by very welcome, but green, reinforcements, the entire Canadian Corps was moved back to the Arras Front. Leslie’s company arrived at their billets in the village of Monts-en-Ternois at noon on the 21st, and was bussed to the front lines the following day.


According to the corps history, the massive task of the Canadian Corps was to drive in south of the Scarpe towards Cambrai, to break the Quéant-Drocourt Line and, once the Canal du Nord was reached, to swing southward behind the Hindenburg Line.  No. 2 Company was, as usual, to be in support of the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade on the right front, the attack scheduled for the 26th.

The machine gun crews were assigned positions on high ground near Telegraph Hill, from where they would form part of a series of 16 batteries putting up a creeping barrage of indirect fire to cover the infantry’s advance.  One machine gun was all0tted to every 35 yards of front. Zero hour was at 3 a.m., when the barrage commenced. By 6 a.m. reports of casualties and guns put out of action - by the German counter-barrage - were coming in from crews hampered by thick mist and smoke from the artillery barrage.


Testing a Vickers machinegun, September 1916
Image © and courtesy of Library & Archives of Canada
Some time during the day Leslie was hit in the left shoulder, probably by a machine gun bullet, although it could have been a piece of shrapnel. He was not the only one, the 2nd Battalion CMGC suffering its greatest number of casualties of any single attack in the war up to that point, with a total of 27 men killed and 183 wounded between 26th and 28th August. The CO’s report stated:

Lack of stretchers was very pronounced. In some cases our wounded lay out for over 12 hours and in all cases it was most difficult to evacuate our casualties or to attend to them in the absence of stretchers or bearers.

Hospital Ship Princess Elizabeth
Image © and courtesy of Ian Boyle/Simplon Postcards
He was stretchered first to the nearest first aid post or dressing station, then to No 42 Casualty Clearing Station, where it was ascertained that the "foreign body" was still lodged in his shoulder. Later that day he was evacuated to No 4 General Hospital in Camiers, on the coast. As soon as space could be found in the transports, he was shipped across the Channel aboard the Hospital Ship Princess Elizabeth, a converted Isle of Wight paddle steamer, arriving at the County of Middlesex War Hospital, Napsbury St Albans on 30th August.

An examination at Napsbury the following day is reported on his Medical Case Sheet, in the usual almost indecipherable handwriting:

Entry 2" internal to point of acromion. F.B. (Foreign Body] palpable mid way between this + axilliary fold on post surface. Clean.

An X-ray examination report described a "Bullet present subcutaneous," and a notation makes it clear that he was a "walking," rather than "stretcher" or "chair," patient. Although no X-ray image appears to have survived in his records, the image of a skiagraphic above, extracted from a fellow soldier’s service record, shows a similar lodged bullet. On 6th September an operation was conducted and the doctors successfully removed the offending piece of lead.


Patients and nurses at Napsbury St Albans, 1917
Image © Rohan Price and courtesy of Hertfordshire Genealogy
The subsequent entries on his medical records indicate that he "returned from auxilliary, healed" on 4th October, and was discharged to the Canadian Military Convalescent Hospital at Woodcote Park, Epsom three days later. He was given a final medical examination on 8th October which pronounced him fit “Di” and, after recuperating for another week, he was discharged on Monday 14th and sent on furlough for ten days.


154 Almond Street, Normanton, Derby
Image © & courtesy of Google Maps Street View
Of course Leslie headed straight home to Derby but when he arrived he found Con very ill. She succumbed to influenza at 154 Almond Street, Normanton, Derby on Sunday 20th October. It was the second major wave of the “Spanish” flu epidemic in the United Kingdom, with hundreds of thousands dying, and Leslie’s distress during the journey back to the Canadian Machine Gun Depot at Seaford, Sussex on the 24th must have been acute. The regulation requirement to report to the Paymaster that his wife was deceased, and therefore he was no longer entitled to separation pay, would no doubt have added insult to injury, the loss of $25 a month being the least of his concerns.

At 11 a.m. on 11th November 1918, the day that Leslie received his final TAB inoculation, the armistice between the German and Allied Forces came into effect, and the war was suddenly over. Without Con, Les must have looked at peace time with mixed emotions. Who knows what their plans had been? Would they have gone back to Winnipeg together, where Leslie had a decent clerk’s job at Eaton’s department store waiting for him? It seems likely. He was eventually demobilised in Canada in February 1919, after a prolonged stay at Kinmel Park in Wales and a trip across the Atlantic on the S.S. Olympic, but that’s a story for another time.


Leslie Payne, Summer 1915 (left) and Winter 1918/19 (right)
Paper prints, Collection of Barbara Ellison
I find it telling how much he changed in that short space of time. He was a fresh-faced 22 year-old when he enlisted in the CEF in November 1914, and a haggard 26 on discharge. He looks at least a decade older in the later photo, not just three or four years, and I’m sure it was not just his appearance that was different. I've been told that Grandpa hardly ever talked about the war, at least not to anyone who ever felt comfortable to share such confidences with others, and from what I can tell this was not uncommon amongst Great War veterans.

How should he communicate and explain such a kaleidoscope mish-mash of contradictory emotions and experiences in which they had been suddenly immersed on the Western Front, in Leslie’s case, for 2 years, 11 months and 14 days? Their subjection, after rudimentary initial training, to a totally unfamiliar environment, the exhausting slog of marching and carrying supplies to the front, the tedium and discomfort of life in the trenches, the camaraderie eventually engendered between members of a machine gun crew who lived every moment of every day together, often within inches of each other, for months on end, and the anticipation of death at any moment, from any quarter, in the trenches, eventually replaced with mind-numbing resignation – all these would have been incomprehensible to their families and friends back home.

I hope that he was eventually able to dispel at least some of the dark thoughts, but I am sure there were many others that he could never forget. And nor should we.

War Memorial Service in Melbourne, Derbyshire, c.1926

Diane Hicklin recently purchased this photographic postcard and kindly sent me a scan. Given the recent 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War on Remembrance Day, I thought an article featuring this photograph would be appropriate.


It shows a large group of people gathered around what looks like a circular, stone folly or memorial, and has the name "W. MAYELL MELBOURNE" blind stamped in the lower right corner. The pole in the middle ground may be a flag pole.

The original eBay listing describes it as a "Breedon on the Hill War Memorial Service, circa 1919," and includes a more modern photograph of the memorial. A photograph of the Breedon memorial, situated on the village green, is also included in the Wikipedia areticle on the village. A planning document from the North-West Leicestershire District Council (Breedon on the Hill Conservation Area Appraisal & Study, April 2001) states that the War Memorial was erected in 1926, while a recent meeting of the Breedon parish council (Minutes, 6 Oct 2008) noted that the "memorial needs sign writing renovation."

I suspect that Diane's postcard photo was probably taken on the occasion of the unveiling of the memorial. The clothing worn by the men and women attending the event seems appropriate for the mid-1920s.


Breedon on the Hill Green & War Memorial
© Michael Patterson, courtesy of Geograph and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
This excellent photograph by Michael Patterson, from the very useful web site Geograph, shows the memorial on the village green, with the commemmorative list of names clearly visible.


The reverse of the postcard is unfortunately of a standard design, revealing no further details of either the photographer or the event/location. What is not clear is whether "W. Mayell" actually took the photograph or merely published and/or sold it. Diane's father told her that Mayell had a general store in Melbourne's High Street in the mid-1930s, which he remembered going into as a small boy, but he had no recollection of any photographic business.

Examination of trade directories of the period reveals a little more:

1926-1927 : Mayell's Cafe, restaurant, High Street, Melbourne
1932 : Mayel Walt. refreshment rooms, High Street, Melbourne
1935 : Mayell Walter, confectioner, High Street, Melbourne

While I don't yet have a definitive answer in relation to whether Walter Mayell took the photograph or not, it appears that he probably arrived in the village between the end of the Great War and the mid-1920s, where he opened a shop on the High Street. He may have taken photographs and published them as postcards - he almost certainly sold such postcards in his shop.

Many thanks, Diane, for the opportunity to use this interesting photograph. From what I have read, I have the impression that the mid-1920s saw a great number of memorials to those who fell during the war built around the country. However, I know of no work which gives any kind of summary. It would be an interesting project.

References

Anon (1926-1927) Midland Counties of England Trades' Directory, republ. on microfiche by Derbyshire Family History Society
Anon (1932) Kelly's Trade Directory, republ. on microfiche by Derbyshire Family History Society
Anon (1935) Whipple's Trade Directory, republ. on microfiche by Derbyshire Family History Society

Charlie Smith in the Machine Gun Corps

Some time ago Nigel Aspdin sent me this postcard photograph of a family member, Charles Sydney Smith, who served in the Machine Gun Corps (British/Imperial, rather than Canadian) during the Great War. Charlie was born in 1890 in Nottingham, son of a bank clerk John Bywater Smith (1847-1897) and Mary Ann Woolley. After his father died in 1897, they moved to Derby, where he married Beatrice Slater in 1915. In the outdoors portrait, he is shown in the uniform of a British officer, the cap badge identifying him as a member of the Machine Gun Corps, and mounted on a horse. The lower margin of the photograph is annotated, "France. May 1916," while the reverse, shown below, has a lengthier message to his wife.

17/5/16
Darling little girlie,
What do you think of this photo, it is not very good as my horse won't keep still. Hope the measles are OK. We move up into the trenches to-day. Weather is A.1. Want a letter from you and can't get one. Will write if possible to-night, hope to get leave after this spell in the trenches, but will let you know in plenty of time.
All my love
Charlie

This would be an interesting photograph to research on its own, and it was sitting in my "to do" file, waiting for a suitable moment. However, yesterday, while browsing photographs for sale on eBay, I came across a listing of a postcard which seemed rather familiar:


It seems an extraordinary coincidence, but this photograph was taken at exactly the same spot as the one of Charlie Smith, albeit that the shutter on the window has been raised and a woman stands in the previously empty doorway. The eBay listing states that it is inscribed on the reverse, "Dick 21.6.16," so it appears to have been taken just over a month later. Unfortunately, my meagre funds allowed for eBay purchases won't stretch to this one. I presume the photographer's studio was located in the vicinity of the yard.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission web site and database show that Major Charles Sydney Smith of the Machine Gun Corps, and husband of Beatrice Smith of 3 Wheeldon Avenue, Derby, died on 28 November 1918 at the age of 28, and was buried at the Nottingham Road Cemetery in Derby (Grave/Memorial Ref. 3872 (C.)). It also states that he was awarded the Military Cross, and was mentioned in dispatches. The Nottingham Road Cemetery, which featured in a recent article, "contains 193 First World War burials and 134 from the Second World War. There is a small war graves plot of about 40 burials from both wars, the rest of the graves are scattered throughout the cemetery."


His medal card shows that he arrived in France on 11 March 1916, but there is sadly little else to show what he was doing between then and his death in November 1918, shortly after the war had ended.

The Whitehead brothers of Derby

Fellow family historians will sympathize with my frustration at the number of old photographs in the family collections that are not annotated, and for which there is now nobody left alive to identify the subjects. In some of my articles I have been sharing ideas, tips and techniques by which such photographs may be researched, and for which there is a possibility of making tentative identifications. In one such article posted recently - Portrait of a young man in Derby, by Milton ... or perhaps Frost? - I made some progress with two turn-of-the-century portraits belonging to my aunt.

In this article, I present a photograph of a rather different nature, which can be equally as perplexing. The subjects are clearly identified by name ... the question is, "Who were they, and what connection did they have to my family?" To some, these photographs are peripheral to their ancestral research, and may be largely ignored. To me, however, they form an important part of the overall jigsaw puzzle that outlines the life of a particular ancestor or family group. To carry the analogy a little further, these photographs can add significantly to the background of the main character, in a puzzle without edges that won't ever be complete, but will be far more interesting than a series of dates and a simple outline of a life.


This mounted large format print (72.5 x 98.5 mm on a pale beige and brown embossed card mount 140 x 165 mm) is typical of the little projects that I let myself get sidetracked on from time to time ... okay, quite a lot of the time. It shows three young men seated and standing in formal triangular arrangement in a garden setting. Two of them are dressed in suits, one wearing a trilby, the other a flat cap, while the third (seated at right) is in a military uniform and is holding a peaked forage cap on his right knee.


The uniform looks to me to be from the pre-Great War era. The cap badge is fairly clear - a passant lion with three words beneath it (the first word could be "THE" - but it's not clear which regiment it was from. It looks very much like this one which, according to Bernard Renshaw's web site, Military Regimental Cap Badges UK, is from the King's Own (Royal Lancashire Regiment).


The front two men are seated on what looks like a slatted wooden garden seat, in front of which is a herbaceous border, and behind the group is the trellised front to a garden shed or similar structure. At the base of the card mount, hand written in black pencil or pen, are the names of the three men, Vincent, Cecil and Maurice.


The reverse of the card mount reveals, in the same handwritten black ink, "Vincent, Cecil and Maurice Whitehead." Subsequently, my aunt has printed below this, also in black ink, "CHARLES VINCENT PAYNE (STANDING)." However, I had some doubts about the identification of the Vincent in the photograph as my great-grandfather Charles Vincent Payne (1868-1941). The original caption suggested to me that the name of the man standing was Vincent Whitehead, not Payne, even though his face does have some superficial resemblance to CVP, as shown in the images below.


"Vincent" in a fedora (left), and Charles Vincent Payne in a top hat (right)
I'm not aware of any genealogical connections to a family named Whitehead, so the next step was to find out who they were. The mount gives no indication of photographic studio or location. However, as my initial estimate of date was around 1910, and most of my aunt's family were living in and around Derby at that time, Derby was naturally the first place to look.


Extract from 1891 Census: WHITEHEAD family,
53 Silverhill Rd, Litchurch, Derby, Derbyshire
National Archives Ref. RG12/2735/106/46/308
Image © the National Archives and courtesy of Ancestry
A search of the 1901 and 1891 Censuses (using indexed images from Anestry.com) and various trade directories quickly turned up a Whitehead family in Derby with sons named Vincent, Cecil and Maurice, living first at 53 Silverhill Road, Litchurch (1891), then at 118 Richmond Road (1895) and 68 Normanton Road, Derby St Peter's (1899-1901). They were sons of Richard David Whitehead and Elizabeth Ann Barnett, who were originally from Manchester, but moved to Derby in early 1890, when Vincent Whitehead was eight and Cecil Barnett Whitehead was six. Maurice Whitehead was born in December 1890, shortly after their arrival. There were also four sisters, Annie, Minnie, Dorothy and Ethel. Richard D. Whitehead was employed as a science teacher (mechanical & civil engineering) at the Derby Technical College. Their mother died in early 1898, at the age of 37, and a paternal aunt Martha Ann Whitehead came to live with the family as a housekeeper, before their father remarried in late 1901.


By this time, Cecil was a soldier, and the census of 31 March 1901 shows him in the infantry at Chatham Barracks in Kent. Vincent married in 1904 and Cecil did likewise in 1909. However it is Maurice who is shown in uniform, not Cecil, and I found a First World War medal card for Maurice, showing that he was a Sergeant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Regimental Number 33905).


The web site and database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission show that Maurice Whitehead died on 26 September 1917, while serving with the 10th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and his name is commemmorated on Panels 63-65 of the Tyne Cot War Memorial (Certificate), 9 kilomteres to the north-east of Ieper (Ypres). It is obvious that he was killed or went missing during the Third Battle of Ypres, an offensive mounted by Imperial and Commonwealth forces to distract German attention from weakened French positions in the south, and culminated in the Battle of Passchendaele in November 1917.

Chris McCarthy has the following account of the actions on the V Corps front, covered by the 3rd Division and the 76th Brigade, during the Battle of Polygon Wood from 26 September to 3 October, in his book, "The Third Ypres - Passchendaele: The Day-by-Day Account" (Arms & Armour Press, London, 1995, ISBN 1 85409 217 0).

76th Brigade: On the right of the railway, the 2nd Suffolks and the 10th Royal Welsh Fusiliers advanced. Whilst encountering little resistance, they were briefly held up as they sought a crossing point over the Steenbeek, but they carried on to the Green Line. Aftre the railway had been crossed the attack lost momentum under heavy machine-gun fire from the station. The centre of Zonnebeke was entered by parties of the RWF and the Suffolks but the station held out and they could only get to within 200 yards of it. At 2.30 p.m. the first counter-attack was launched but this was easily repulsed. A more determined attack was made at 6.30 p.m. but was stopped with rifle and machine-gun fire ... the 10th RWF held 150 yards of the road running north-west from the church.

While I've discovered a fair amount about the Whitehead brothers, I'm really no nearer to discovering what the connection was to my Payne family. There are, however, several possibilities. Vincent (born 1881) and Cecil (born 1884) were of a similar age to my great-grandfather's youngest brother Fred Payne (1879-1946) and sisters Lucy Mary Payne (1876-1953), Lily Payne (1882-1968) and Helen Payne (1883-1933). Maurice (born 1890) was more a contemporary of my grandfather Charles Lesley Lionel Payne (1892-1975). I'm hoping that one day, either I will come across further clues to add to the picture, or that someone researching the Whitehead family will stumble across this article.

Canadian War Graves - Ed Pye and the 5th Canadian Infantry Battalion

When I was scanning a collection of old family photographs at my aunt's house in Derbyshire last year, I came across a photograph which didn't appear to be of a known family member. I didn't have an opportunity to have a good look at it then, but scanned it at a fairly high resolution (600 dpi) so that I could investigate it further at a later stage. Well, I've now had that opportunity, and have decided to share it here because I think it is a good demonstration of how documentary, as well as photographic, sources can be used to help in the identification process. It's also a story worth relating.


The photograph is a standard 134 x 85mm postcard with a divided back. It shows a young man, in uniform and with his cap in hand, kneeling next to two graves, both with cross-shaped grave markers, in a cemetery which is somewhat overgrown with weeds. More grave markers are visible in the background, as are several wooden fences and a line of trees. Enlargement of the detail of the crosses shows enough of the writing to make out the soldiers' names.

I have used the Debt of Honour database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to identify the soldiers, and the Library & Archives of Canada two online databases, War Diaries of the First World War and Soldiers of the First World War to find out more about them and the events leading up to their deaths.


The grave marker on the right has a freemason's mark (square and dividers/compasses) and the following text:

R.I.P. CAPT. G.P. BOWIE
KILLED IN ACTION, JULY 7th 1915
5th BATTN. 2nd BGDE.
CANADIAN CORPS WESTERN CAVLY.
George Pigrum Bowie was born in Upper Holloway, London on 29 March 1881, and was the eldest son of a clerk in the civil service. The 1911 Census shows him living in Vancouver and working as an architect. Presumably he was also a Freemason. At the time of his enlistment at Valcartier in September 1914, he had already served for three years with the 20th Middlesex Rifles, and was an active member of the 31st British Columbia Horse, a militia regiment. His attestation paper shows that he was granted a temporary commission.

The CWCG database entry confirms his date of death, give his age as 34 and states that he was serving with "A" Company, 5th Battalion at the time. It also states that his grave lies in Plot III. D. 10. of the Berks Cemetery Extension, located 12.5 kilometres south of Ieper (Ypres) town centre, 3 kilometres beyond Mesen (Messines) and opposite Hyde Park Corner Royal Berks Cemetery. These two cemeteries lie between Ploegsteert Wood (Bois de Ploegsteert) and Bois de la Hutte.


Examination of the 5th C.I.Bn. War Diaries for that period show them to have been in the forward trenches. The entry for 7th July refers to work being done to deepen and improve trenches, the need for refurbishment of the wire in no-man's-land, the dispersal of enemy working parties with rifle fire, and trouble with enemy snipers, including the killing of Capt. C.P. Bowie by a sniper's bullet.


The other grave marker reads,

12990 PTE. A.E. GABBE
KILLED IN ACTION AUG 30th 1915
There is more text around the lower edges, but it is difficult to make out. Albert Gustave E. Gabbe was born on 11 October 1891 at Dover, Kent, where his parents were hotelkeepers. He also enlisted at Valcartier on 24 September 1914, having previously served for 3½ years with the Royal Field Artillery. The CWGC database also has 30 August 1915 as his date of death, but provides no further information apart from his plot number, III. D. 9., also in the Berks Cemetery Extension.


The War Diary entry for that day only shows, "Casualties:- 1 killed, 1 wounded."


There are two other grave markers visible, but the text on these is even more difficult to decipher. I thought the one closer to the camera could be "W. McFARL(ANE)," and I found a list of the 873 graves in Berks Cemetery Extension on Pierre Vandervelden's In Memory web site, including the following entry:

MACFARLANE WILLIAM JAMES
United Kingdom Lance Corporal 2244 Seaforth Highlanders 02/04/1915 Age: 23 III. C. 28.

The CWGC database entry for this soldier provides further information:

Unit: "B" Coy. 2nd Bn. Seaforth Highlanders
Son of William and Alice Maud Macfarlane, of Lewisham, London. Born at Dingwall, Ross-shire.

Unfortunately, the name on the cross behind Macfarlane's is just too difficult to decipher.


Alan Jennings has an interesting page, Plugstreet, about the area around Ploegsteert Wood on his excellent World War One Battlefields web site. This includes two old photographs of the Royal Berkshire Cemetery Extension taken c. 1919, which show similar cross-shaped grave markers. However, it is clear from the the CWGC history of the Berks Cemetery Extension, and from Alan's explanation, that the current graves of Capt. Bowie, Pte. Gabbe and L/Cpl. MacFarlane must have been moved there from elsewhere:

The extension was begun in June 1916 and used continuously until September 1917. At the Armistice, the extension comprised Plot I only, but Plots II and III were added in 1930 when graves were brought in from Rosenberg Chateau Military Cemetery and Extension, about 1 kilometre to the north-west, when it was established that these sites could not be acquired in perpetuity. Rosenberg Chateau Military Cemetery was used by fighting units from November 1914 to August 1916. The extension was begun in May 1916 and used until March 1918. Together, the cemetery and extension were sometimes referred to as 'Red Lodge'.

Alan Jennings adds the following:

... the Rosenburg Chateau Military Cemetery and Extension stood in the grounds of the chateau of that name, and the owner felt that, as he rebuilt his house, the cemetery would stand too close to it. Despite pleas from the British and Belgian authorities, he remained firm, and eventually the 475 men buried there were exhumed and moved the half mile distance to this, their final resting place. In March 1930 The Times reported that "each body, as it was reverently taken from the earth, was placed in a coffin draped with the Union Jack and removed by motor ambulance to the Royal Berkshire Cemetery Extension".

Thanks to Alan's reference, I was able to find the image of the article very easily in the Online Newspaper Archive of The Times from 1785-1985. A transcript of the full article is provided here.


This extract of a 1:40,000 Ordnance Survey map of Belgium and Part of France (Sheet 28, Edition 3, published in February 1917 from data corrected to 23-12-16) shows the western part of Ploegsteert Wood, now commonly referred to as Bois de la Hutte. The area now occupied by the Berks Cemetery Extension is situated immediate to the south-west of Hyde Park Corner. Red Lodge is shown approximately a kilometre (each square has sides of 1000 yds, which approximates to a kilometre) to the north-west of Hyde Park Corner. This is roughly in the area that Alan Jennings' map refers to as the "Report Centre," now consisting of a large concrete structure which he believes may have been the entrance to the "Catacombs," beneath Hill 63. Immediately to the north of the "o" of "Red Lodge" on the OS map is a rectangular plot which I believe may have been the Rosenberg Chateau Military Cemetery and Extension.


On the reverse there is little of much use in the identification - only the words, "CANADIAN WAR GRAVES BELGIUM" written in ink, in my aunt's handwriting. My grandfather Leslie Payne (1892-1975) served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the Great War, so it seemed very likely that the photograph had something to do with his war service. One of the gravestones has what appears to be a Canadian maple leaf, the emblem of the CEF, at the top. The soldier in the picture was definitely not my grandfather, but he looked familiar. After some deliberation I realized that I had seen him in another photograph belonging to my grandfather, one of a group that had been passed down to my father.


This snapshot of three soldiers seated outside a dugout or revetment fortified with corrugated iron and sandbags, accompanied a letter sent to Leslie Payne, then living in Derbyshire, England, by his friend Ed Pye in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada). The letter is dated 26 June 1936 - in it my grandfather's old pal Ed recalls making, "... in the summer of 1916, occasional visits from Ploegsteert to your camp east of Bailleul" and refers to the snapshot thus, "Have dug out another war photo taken in 1915; Hill 63, Ploegsteert Wood, you may recognize the Clown Prince at left."


The clown prince was, of course, Ed himself, confirmed by another photograph I found illustrating an article which he had written for the Legionary magazine. This clearly shows his C/5 collar tag which shows that he served with the 5th Canadian Infantry Battalion. A few years ago, learning that Ed Pye had been a friend of my grandfather's since they worked together for the CPR in Saskatchewan before the war, and then throughout the war, I ordered Ed Pye's full CEF Service Records from the Library & Archives of Canada. From these, I was able to piece together an outline of his movements during the war. Subsequently, I have also been in touch with Ed's son Brian Pye and grandson Robert Edge, who have kindly provided further information.

Arthur Edwin Pye (1893-1960) originally enlisted in the 60th Rifles at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan on 12 August 1914, and five weeks later was attested into the 11th Battalion at Valcartier. He sailed over to England from Canada with the First Contingent on the SS Royal Edward in October 1914. After training, during which time he was transferred to the 5th Canadian Battalion (Western Cavalry), he went over to France in February 1915, being sent straight to the front as part of the First Canadian Division. He was wounded in March 1916, and spent some time at No. 1 Convalescent Depot in Boulogne, but appears to he recovered sufficiently to have been sent back to the front again after some time at "Base". He probably spent much of summer 1916 at the front - the service records only show that he was promoted twice in June - but was wounded for a second time on the Somme at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on 26 September, which got him his "Blighty".

I believe, therefore, that this photograph must have been taken in the spring or summer of 1916. I presume that Ed Pye visited and had his photo taken next to these particular graves because they were of men that he had served with the previous year. I don't know if they had particular relevance to my grandfather. If the deceased soldiers were living in Saskatchewan prior to their enlistment in the CEF, then I suppose it is possible he knew them. However, it's more likely that Ed sent the postcard to him as a photograph of himself, rather than of the graves.