Albert Leggett

Albert Leggett's service record survives as a burnt document in the WO 363 series at the National Archives. Ancestry has just made service records I-N available on-line and so, twenty odd years after I first transcribed Albert's entry in Nurse Oliver's album, I have been able to find out more about him. I've now written up my notes and updated Albert's page on the website.

Albert was not a resident of Chailey but a wound on a battlefield in France would ensure that he would soon be acquainted with the parish. He enlisted with the Northamptonshire Regiment at Norwich in April 1915. By the end of July that year he was in France and, posted to the regular 1st Battalion, would fight through Loos and the Battle of the Somme until severely wounded at Pozieres in August 1916. He was in hospital in France for just under a month and then, returning to England in September 1916, would spend at least another ten weeks in hospitals in England; first to the 2nd Eastern General Hospital at Brighton and then to Beechlands (or Beechland House) in Newick. Later transferred to the 2/5th Scottish Rifles and then the RAMC, Albert would spend the rest of the war in England. The leave that he was granted from hospital in December 1916 was beneficial to Albert and his wife. In September 1917 their second child was born.

Albert was discharged from the army in March 1919 and two months later, a grateful country, acknowledging that his wound amounted to a 20 per cent degree of disablement, awarded him a weekly pension of five shillings and sixpence, to be reviewed twelve months later. Subsequent Board papers do not survive but it seems likely, given the many other soldiers' papers I have seen, that his award was reduced.

A heavy sacrifice

On 23rd April 1918, Alexander Plummer, serving with the 19th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, was killed in action. He was the youngest of six boys and one of three brothers to be killed during the First World War. His brother Albert Plummer had been killed in action on 2nd July 1916 whilst a third brother, Owen Plummer, had been killed on 5th April the previous year. Alexander has no known grave and is commemorated on the Pozieres memorial. All three brothers are also commemorated on the Chailey war memorial.

Also mourning two sons in April, were James and Margaret Smith of Yew Tree Cottage, Cornwell's Bank, Newick. Their son Frederick James Smith had been killed on 17th April 1917 at Arras and now, on 26th April 1918, another son, George Spencer Smith, was killed in Belgium whilst serving with the 13th Royal Sussex Regiment. He is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial. Tragically, James and Margaret also lost two other sons to the Great War: Septimus Sydney Smith at Gallipoli on 19th August 1915 and Edward George Smith on the Somme on 26th July 1916. All four brothers are remembered on the war memorial at Newick.

Thus between them, the Plummer family of Chailey and the Smith family of Newick lost seven sons, holding the unenviable distinction of being the two families from those two villages who made the greatest sacrifices.

April is the cruellest month

On 5th April 1917, Chailey born Private Owen Plummer of the Army Service Corps, was killed in action. Exactly one year later, Private Edward Wells who, at the time of his enlistment, was living in Chailey, was killed in action whilst serving with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.

Owen is buried in Douchy-les-Ayette British Cemetery in France and commemorated on Chailey's memorial along with two of his brothers, Albert Plummer and Alexander Plummer. Edward Wells has no known grave but is commemorated on the Pozieres memorial in France. He is not named on the Chailey parish memorial.

L/Cpl Albert Thompsett

Albert Thompsett died on this day in 1918; he would have been about 19 years old.

Like many men, he almost certainly enlisted when he was under age, but by October 1916 he was in France and serving with the 12th Royal Sussex Regiment (also known as the 2nd South Down). He was not an original South Down enlistment but he must have felt at home in a battalion which, originally at least, had been compiled from men from his home county.

At some point he was posted to the sister battalion, the 11th Royal Sussex, and it was whilst serving with this unit that he was killed. Albert's body was never found and he is commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial to the Missing in France.

James Sweeney - patched up then killed

James Sweeney had no connections with Chailey other than that he was sent to Hickwells to recuperate after being wounded on the second day of the Battle of Loos.

James's entry in Nurse Oliver’s album reads:

Pte J Sweeney 18406

13 Batt Royal Scots
wounded at Hill 70 26/9/15
during the Battle of Loos

He shares this page with entries from fellow Scotsmen 7567 Private John Currie of the 10th Gordon Highlanders and S/7793 Private Andrew Geddes of the 1/7th Gordon Highlanders.

James was born at Newbattle, Midlothian.  He arrived in France on 9th July 1915 with the 13th Royal Scots which formed part of the 45th Brigade in the 15th (Scottish) Division.  He was wounded at Hill 70 on the second day of the battle of Loos, 26th September 1915, the day that 18274 Private Robert Dunsire of the same battalion, won the Victoria Cross.  The following two paragraphs are adapted from my narrative, The Hospital Way. 

James Sweeney may have been wounded by British artillery fire dropping short onto the trenches that the 45th Brigade was holding.  The morning was misty and the artillery had been told that the trenches would be temporarily evacuated.  But nobody had told the Scotsmen and the 13th Royal Scots in particular had suffered casualties.  With classic understatement, The Official Historian would write many years later, that the men upon whom the British shells fell “… were therefore somewhat shaken and not perhaps able to take such a vigorous part in the assault as they might otherwise have done.”

By the time the attack was finally pressed at 9am, the mist had lifted and although parties of the attacking battalions succeeded in breaking through into the German lines where desperate hand-to-hand fighting ensued, they were simply overwhelmed.  The attack failed not due to lack of determination on the Scotsmens’ part but because of heavy machine gun cross-fire from both sides and artillery fire which either killed them as they ran or forced their surviving colleagues to retire.  The few remaining men of the Fifteenth Division could not, on their own, re-take Hill 70.  More help would be needed.

James probably arrived back in England at the beginning of October and after travelling first to the 2nd Eastern General Hospital at Brighton, would have transferred shortly afterwards to Hickwells.  He obviously recovered from his wound and was transferred to the 12th Royal Scots Regiment in the 27th Brigade of the 9th (Scottish) Division.  It was while serving with this battalion that he was killed in action on 26th March 1918; one of four Royal Scots fatalities on that day.  James Sweeney has no known grave and is commemorated on panel 4 of the Pozieres memorial in France.

 

 

 

My thanks to Ken and Pam Linge for taking the photograph of James' name on the Pozieres memorial (above). Medal index card courtesy of Ancestry.