Category Archives: Memorials

Ernest Arthur Webb

Army, Commemorated name/s, Primitive Methodists' Memorial, Pulsometer Engineering, Royal Berkshire Regiment

Ernest Arthur Webb
Private 10510 “B” Company
5th Batt. Royal Berkshire Regt.

Division 3 

Webb EA CIMG2083

Ernest Arthur Webb is commemorated on the headstone of the family grave.  He was initially reported missing and later as killed in action on the 3rd July 1916 during the Somme campaign.  He had his 21st birthday on the 1st July 1916, the first day of the battle when Britain lost more men in one day than at any time before or since.

Ernest Webb has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial to the missing.  Pier and Face 11D.

Webb EA name

 

Ernest was the eldest son of Arthur and Jane Webb, of 55, Queen’s Road, Reading. (late 221 Southampton St.) The 1911 census indicates that he had four siblings. Two older sisters and two younger brothers. At the time he was an apprentice driller at the engineering company. This company was Pulsometer Engineering and his name is commemorated on their war memorial. Pulsometer Engineering was the company where Trooper Frederick Owen Potts, the Reading V.C., also worked.  Arthur Webb worked in the sugar wafer department and sister Daisy was a teapacker in the tea warehouse.

Arthur Tutty

Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments, Y.M.C.A.

Arthur Tutty
Lance Corporal 2241
Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars

 Division 70 Extension

Tutty A photo1 Tutty A photo2

 

Arthur Tutty was the youngest son of Mr and Mrs James Tutty J.P.  of “Inverinate”, 4 Christchurch Rd.  James Tutty had already died at the time of his son’s death.  Arthur died on the 24th June 1916, aged 23. 

 The circumstances of Arthur Tutty’s death were particularly unlucky.  The Reading Standard of 8th July 1916 gives an account of the circumstances.  The details are taken from a letter sent to his mother. “Lance Corporal Tutty was severely wounded in the lower parts of his body and one leg was shattered.  He was in billets at the time, for two days’ rest behind the firing line, and was walking to the canteen with several other men when a stray shell exploded and left his comrades unhurt.”  Arthur Tutty is buried in Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension II. E. 157. 

A memorial to Arthur, paid for by his chums, who held him in high esteem, and bearing their names, was placed on his father’s grave. 

Tutty Rcem mem

Arthur Tutty had been educated at York House School, Reading and Reading Collegiate School.  He had a liking for the out door life and had gone to Canada as an apprentice farmer.  He had been in Canada for two years but returned when his father was taken ill.  However, he had continued his training on the land. Arthur was well known in Reading athletic circles.  He was a good all-round sportsman, like his brothers he excelled in football and cricket.

His officer, writing about his death, said: “He was as brave as a lion, a splendid soldier, and one that could be least spared; he could always be relied upon to carry out the most difficult tasks thoroughly and exactly as instructed, and, above all this, was a perfect gentleman.”  He had many friends.  Arthur Tutty was expecting to get home leave at the time of his death.

 The Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars were part of the British Expeditionary Force and had the distinction of being the first Territorial (Yeomanry) Force to embark for France as the Cavalry of the Marines Division. The Marines were the baby of Winston Churchill who was First Lord of the Admiralty and his family had been associated with the Hussars for more than a hundred years.

On 3rd October 1914 the Hussars were the only British force standing between the Germans and the sea, the Marines had been ordered to Antwerp.  The action there resulted in the small Belgium army escaping to fight another day although the town itself fell to the Germans.  After the action the Royal Naval Division was withdrawn and the Q.O.O.H. were recalled to England.  However, the officers of the unit, having enjoyed chasing German cavalry were reluctant to leave and all but mutinied.  They sent representatives to see the Commander-in-Chief Sir John French, pleading to be allowed to stay.  French liked their cheek and explained that whilst he could not absorb them into the official fighting force as they were not part of the official BEF, he would allow them to stay as guards for the HQ in St. Omer.  By the end of October 1914 they found themselves in action at Messines Ridge in the First Battle of Ypres.

Harry Tillen

Alfred Sutton School War Memorial, Jutland, Navy, Park Congregational Church War Memorial

Harry Tillen
Able Seaman Royal Navy H.M.S. “Invincible”

TILLEN H

 Harry Tillen was the son of Kate Allen (formerly Tillen) of 46, Crescent Road. (CWGC register gives spelling as Tillin)  The 1901 census indicates that Kate had married George Stephen Allen, a gasman’s labourer and they lived at 57 Foxhill Road, Reading. Harry was the youngest of Kate’s three children who are recorded as George’s step children. The 1911 census indicates that the family hadmoved to Crescent Road and Harry was working as a grocers errand boy. 

Harry Tillen was lost at sea and his name is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. His name is commemorated on the Alfred Sutton School Memorial  and also commemorated on the Park Church and Institute Memorial.   Harry Tillen was aged 20 years when he died.

 The H.M.S. “Invincible” was among the Battle Cruisers of the Grand Fleet which was reviewed by the King in July 1914.  The Britain Empire ruled the seas and was superior to any other Empire in the number of vessels at its disposal.  Harry Tillen would have been proud to serve as an able seaman in this navy.

 In 1916 with a stalemate on land it became the turn of the navies to try and break the deadlock at sea.  The British Grand Fleet was based in the Firth of Forth, Moray Firth and Scapa Flow;  the German High Seas Fleet at Wilhelmshaven.  On the morning of 31st May 1916 Mary Clarke, a young nursing sister on board the Grand Fleet Hospital Ship Plassy,  watched the cruisers steaming up and with the other nurses “wondered if there is really anything doing this time, there have been so many false alarms.”  She recorded in her diary that “this evening after dinner two or three officers arrived in board with note books etc to find out what accommodation we had got for the wounded, how many cots, how many stretchers etc & later on we got a signal to get full steam going, so as to sail at a moments notice.”  The battle cruisers she had watched in the morning had been setting out for Jutland, a Danish territory, by evening two of them had already been sunk by the German navy. The “anything doing” turned out to be Battle of Jutland, the only major sea battle of the Great War.