Service number: 12815 | Rank: Private | Regiment: Suffolk Regiment
Killed in action, June 16, 1915, in Flanders. Aged 21.
Remembered at YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT ARTHUR …
Arthur was born in Lowestoft during the spring of 1894 and enlisted for the Army at Bury St. Edmunds. Apart from that not much else is currently known about him, nor of the connection to Brandon that warranted him appearing on the town’s war Memorial. Perhaps he lived in Brandon with his parents when they lived in the town, although at the end of the war they were living in East Harling.
At the age of twenty-one Arthur found himself at the front line with the Suffolk Regiment and the regiment had already suffered casualties, including five killed, in the week before he himself was killed. On the fateful day of June 16th 1915 the Suffolks made their move, a dawn attack on a wood, without incurring casualties. In fact the operation went too well and a British artillery barrage, calculated to force the Germans out of the wood, actually fell onto the Suffolks’ forward positions. It appears that Arthur survived this attack but his undoing began when other units were supposed to come through the Suffolk lines at about 2pm and take up a further push forward into enemy lines. These reinforcing units got themselves lost on the way to the Suffolks’ lines and the momentum was in danger of floundering. Some men from the Suffolks were then tasked with leaving their positions and going back to locate the lost units and then guide through to the front line. As these Suffolk men left their positions they knew they had to cross over exposed areas and the enemy artillery duly opened up on them killing a sergeant and four privates and wounding sixteen others. Arthur was one of those privates killed.