Lance Corporal John Luther Knight, 4th East Surrey Regt

In October 1918, Chailey Parish Magazine records a Corporal J L Knight serving with the 4th East Surrey Regiment.  This information is repeated up to and including July 1919. 

J L Knight is probably John Luther Knight who appears on the 1901 census England and Wales, living with his parents at Chailey.  The household at Longridge Farm, North  Chailey comprised William Knight (head, a farmer/employer aged 29) and his wife Naomi Mary (aged 31).  Children living with them are noted as: William Phelps Knight (aged five), John Luther (aged two), Naomi Mary (aged one) and Edward Jesse (aged two months). 

There is no medal index card that I found for John Luther Knight but there are a number of East Surrey men by the name of John Knight and this avenue requires further research.

6841533 Private Frederick Ludlam, King’s Royal Rifle Corps

In December 1917, Chailey Parish Magazine notes Ludlam, Trooper F, attached 2/6th E Surrey Regt.  This information is then repeated up to and including December 1918, after which date there is no further information about this man. 

The 2/6th East Surrey Regiment was formed at Kingston-upon-Thames in September 1914. It became part of the 2nd Surrey Brigade (200th) in the 2nd Home Counties Division (67th) and was disbanded in November 1917. 

Chailey Parish Magazine records Ludlam’s rank as Trooper (indicating a cavalry regiment).  There is only one medal index card that fits this information and that is Trooper Frederick Ludlam whose medal card indicates that he served with the 20th Hussars (number 9843) then the 2/6th Surrey Rifles (number 5385) then the East Surrey Regiment (number 242011) and finally The King’s Royal Rifle Corps (number 51403 and 6841533).  He was a regular soldier who arrived in France with the 20^th Hussars on 16^th August 1914 and kept the rank of private soldier throughout the war, staying on with the KRRC after the war. 

I have been unable to find a Chailey connection for this man or to positively identify him from census returns. 

10233 Private George Trayton Washer, 7th East Surrey Regt

George Trayton Washer was born about May 1891 in Fletching, Sussex. His birth was registered in the June quarter of that year at Uckfield (volume 2b, page 131). The 1901 Census reveals George as the only son of George Washer (a 36 year old general labourer) and his wife, Ada Esther Washer (36) living at Oaklands Cottage, North Chailey. As well as nine year old George, the family also comprised his four sisters: Susan Hannah (aged 12), Edith Ada (aged nine), Mary (aged two) and Annie (aged two months). Another sister, Frances, would follow the following year.

Both the 1901 census and Chailey Parish Magazine record George Washer’s first name as Trayton rather than George although the latter appears to be his given name.

George enlisted in the Corps of Hussars at Lewes, Sussex on 7th September 1914. A Cowman by trade, he was certified as five feet seven inches tall, weighed ten stone, seven pounds, had a fair complexion, blue eyes and fair hair. He was posted to the 5th Cavalry Depot at Bristol and given the number 23402. On 15th January he was given his first typhoid inoculation. On 2nd June 1915, George Washer transferred from the cavalry to the infantry, joining the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment at Dover. On 15th July he was posted to the 7th Battalion and sent overseas to France.

The 7th East Surreys formed part of the 37th Brigade in the 12th (Eastern) Division and had been overseas since 2nd June 1915. George Washer went proceeded first to the 12th Division infantry base, joining his battalion on 19th August and on 13th October 1915, he was killed in action at the Battle of Loos. Two companies of the 7th East Surreys had been tasked to capture a German trench known as Gun Trench and, although, as the 12th Divisional history states, “the attack had been entirely successful, 16 prisoners, 1 machine gun, 3 trench mortars and a large quantity of ammunition being captured”, the attacking forces had not come out unscathed. George was one of 212 Other Rank casualties sustained in the action. His body was never recovered and his name was later commemorated on the Loos memorial (below).

In March 1916, a meeting of The Ancient Order of Foresters in Chailey reported that “… at the end of the year the Court had 20 members serving in the Army or Navy. I regret to state that the court has lost one young member who died fighting for his country – Bro G T Washer, killed in action in France on October 13th 1915…”

On 22nd June 1919, George's living relatives were noted as: George Washer (father) of Burnt House, North Common, Chailey; Ada Washer (mother), Susan Hannah Campbell (full blood sister), aged 30 (Burnt House), Mary Smith (full blood sister), aged 20 of Sewells Cottages, Barcombe; Annie Washer (full blood sister), aged 18 of 3 Sussex Road, Hove and Frances Washer (full blood sister), aged 17 of Burnt House.

Medal index card courtesy of Ancestry. 

Charles Sabourin - updated

Charles Sabourin is one of those rarities - as I discovered late on Friday - who has surviving papers in both the WO 363 and WO 364 series at the National Archives. I already had copies of his badly burned and water damaged papers from the WO 363 series but was surprised to see that I'd missed pension records in the WO 364 series.

Charles, a serving militia man with the 3rd East Surreys, joined the Regular East Surrey Regiment in November 1900, saw service in the Boer War, spent five years in India and was then recalled as a reservist when the First World War was declared. Severely wounded on 23rd August 1914 - the first real day of fighting involving British troops - he was captured by the Germans, had his right leg amputated as a result of a shrapnel wound, and was repatriated as a Prisoner of War in February 1915. He then spent many months at Hickwells and, I think, Beechland House. As his pension records reveal, Charles continued to receive an army pension certainly up until 1952, by which time he would have been seventy years old.

View Charles Sabourin's pension record on-line with a FREE 14 day trial to Ancestry.co.uk - Click here!

Charles's WW1 service with the East Surrey Regiment was brief to say the least. The two-volume title below, covers the history of the regiment from 1914 through to 1919, a period which saw the regiment sustain 6,750 casualties and win eight VCs.

In August 1914 the East Surreys comprised two Regular (1st and 2nd), one Reserve (3rd), one Extra Reserve (4th) and two Territorial battalions (5th and 6th); the Regimental Depot was at Kingston-on-Thames. As the war went on further battalions were added: eight so-called ‘Service’ battalions (7th to 14th) in Kitchener’s New Armies and a second and a third line battalion for each of the Territorial battalions for a total of eighteen battalions of which only nine saw active service overseas, and it is their war record which is the subject of this history.

28239 Private John Ford, 8th East Surrey Regiment

John Ford was killed in action on 3rd May 1917 whilst serving with the 8th East Surrey Regiment. It wasn't until April the following year however, that Chailey Parish Magazine reported that he had been killed in action.

John was born in Chailey around 1885 and before joining the East Surreys had served with the Royal Sussex Regiment. His number indicates that he had joined a Sussex service battalion in February or March 1916 while his East Surrey number, 28239, indicates that he joined this regiment some time between April and December 1916 (but probably nearer to the summer than the winter).

John Ford has no known grave and is commemorated on the Arras memorial.

Remembering Arthur Turner - KiA 89 years ago today

According to the 1901 census, seven year Arthur Turner was born at Ringmer, Sussex although Soldiers Died In The Great War (SD) notes his place of birth as Little Horsted, Sussex. At the time the census was taken, Arthur was living with his parents Henry (46) and Elizabeth (46) at South Street, Chailey. Henry had been born in Ringmer and was working as a farm labourer. Elizabeth had been born at Fletching.

Arthur enlisted in the Royal Sussex Regiment at Lewes, Sussex and was given the number G/21022. Chailey Parish Magazine first mentions him in June 1917, recording him as Turner, Pte A, 3rd Royal Sussex. These details then appear every month up to and including September 1917. In December 1917 he appears in the magazine’s Roll of Honour as: Pte A Turner, 8th Royal Sussex Pioneers, killed in action, Nov 26th 1917 in France.

SD and The Commonwealth War Graves’ Commission’s Roll of Honour (CWGC) note Arthur’s date of death as 27th November 1917, SD stating that he died of wounds. CWGC notes that at the time of his death he was serving with D Company, 8th Royal Sussex and that he was 24 years old. CWGC also notes that he was the son of Henry and Elizabeth Turner of White Lodge, Roeheath, Chailey, Lewes.

The 8th Royal Sussex Battalion was a New Army battalion formed at Chichester in September 1914. It was a pioneer battalion attached to the 54th Brigade in the 18th Division.
The 18th Divisional history has nothing to say about the actual date on which Arthur Turner was killed but it describes the misery of the division’s position in some detail. November 1917 saw it holding fast at Houthulst Forest north of Ypres, “a flat, low-lying 600 acres of broken stumps and wreckage , a swamp with many a deep and treacherous hole to trap the unwary walker and let him in up to the neck… It was mud that stank: when the rain ceased the nostrils had to accept a faded musty smell that hung in the air five miles behind the line – a smell that told of desolation and decay, of gas shells, of dead men.”

Arthur Turner, commemorated on Chailey’s war memorial, is buried at Dozinghem Military Cemetery, Poperinghe. The inscription on his grave stone reads: THE LORD KNOWETH THEM / THAT ARE HIS.