Category Archives: Reading School War Memorial

David James Davies

Abbey Baptist Church, Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments, Reading School War Memorial, Ypres

David James Davies
Second Lieutenant
Machine Gun Corps attached to “C” Battalion Tank Corps.

Division 13

Davies DJ photo

David James Davies was the son of Mr Walter and Mrs Florence Esther Davies of 32. Market Place, Reading.  It was from that address that Walter Davies ran his shop selling china and glass. In 1911 David was 13 and still at school. HIs older sister Ester Madeline is described as working part time in the shop and part time as a student. David’s oldest sister Florence was not living with the family in 1911.  He was commemorated on a his family’s grave. 

 The Third Battle of Ypres began on 31st July 1917.  A bombardment had begun fifteen days earlier and over four million shells had been fired.  (One million had been fired prior to the Battle of the Somme).  At 3.50a.m. the assaulting troops of the Second and Fifth Armies, with a portion of the French First Army lending support on the left, moved forward, accompanied by 136 tanks.  The Tank Corps was only four days old.  Previously it had been known as the Heavy Branch, Machine Gun Corps, a name adopted for purposes of secrecy at their formation.  Preparations for the battle had taken place in dry weather but on the first day the weather broke and three-quarters of an inch (21.7mm) of rain soaked the battlefield.  Men and tanks moved forward behind the creeping barrage over ground churned and cratered by years of shelling.  The surface was softened by the rain but, for all that only two tanks bogged down at the commencement of battle although many ditched later.  A map was prepared by Major Fuller, Staff Intelligence Officer of the Tanks, of the ground over which the tanks were expected to attack.   Where he expected the ground to be marshy, he coloured the area blue.  What he saw appalled him, it was three-quarters of the battlefield.  He sent the maps to Haig’s GHQ so that the Commander in Chief could judge conditions for himself.  However, the map was intercepted by Charteris who refused to show it to the Commander in Chief on the grounds that it would depress him.  Only 48% of the tanks reached their first objective.  Although there was some progress in the early part of the day by late morning the familiar breakdown in communications between infantry and guns occurred.  At two in the afternoon the Germans began to counter attack with a heavy shelling and this together with the heavy rain turned the battle field into soupy mud.  A halt to the offensive was called until the 4th August.  However, Haig insisted that the attack had been “highly satisfactory and the losses slight”.  By comparison with the Somme, when 20,000 men had died on the opening day, only about 8,800 men were reported dead or missing.  The total wounded, including those of the French Army, numbered 35,000, the Germans suffered a similar number.  However, the Germans remained in command of the vital ground and committed none of their counter attack divisions.  Prince Rupprecht , in his diary recorded that he was “very satisfied with the results”.

 It is not known exactly when and where David James Davies was killed in command of his tank but it was struck by a shell on the opening day of the battle.  David Davies had no known grave and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Panel 56.  He was aged 20.

Arthur James Beechey

Army, Commemorated name/s, Dardanelles, Reading Blue Coat School, Reading School War Memorial

Arthur James Beechey
Private Portsmouth Battalion,
Royal Naval Division,
Royal Marine Light Infantry

 Division 41

Beechey AJ photo

Arthur James Beechey, is commemorated on a family memorial.  Grave number ?

He was the son of Mr and Mrs A. Beechey, of 141, Southampton St. Reading.  He was killed in action during the Dardanelles campaign on 1st May 1915.

 Arthur Beechey is buried at Beach Cemetery which is situated on what was known as Hell Spit, at the southern part of Anzac Cove.  Beach Cemetery was used from the day of the Landing at Anzac, almost until the Evacuation.  British forces had landed on the peninsula on the 25th April 1915 and fierce fighting had taken place along the coast ever since.   

The plan was for the Royal Naval Division to launch an feint attack further up the coast at Bulair.  This was carried out and observed by the German Commander of the Turkish forces.  The aim of the attack being to cut off the peninsula from the rest of Turkey.  It was here that von Sanders heard of the attacks around the peninsular. 

At Anzac Cove the landing of Australians and New Zealand forces had taken place.  The fighting was continuos with Lt. Col. Mustapha Kemel sending reinforcements to the front to prevent further allied advances.  Frequently the frenzied attacks meant  certain suicide for the Turkish soldiers.  The Anzacs defended their positions in shallow trenches and gullies.  Although they stood their ground the Anzac forces were shaken by the ferocity of the almost continual attacks and the strain was beginning to show when relief came on the 28th April in the form of the Chatham and Portsmouth Battalions of the R.M.L.I. and the next day by the Deal Battalion.  The following account is taken from Gallipoli by Robert Rhodes James, page 170. 

      “’Chatham was in fair shape,’ one officer has written frankly; ‘Portsmouth had been entirely rebuilt [after Antwerp] from bottom to top.  And Deal was entirely composed of recruits and the left-over officers from the Fleet.  And none of us had had any battalion training at all.’  The delight of the exhausted Anzacs was changed to consternation when they beheld the lines of pith-helmeted, pale and bewildered young men-‘children under untrained officers and I feel very sorry for them’, Birdwood wrote in his diary- toiling up the ravines, each Marine laden with blankets, waterproof sheets, ammunition and rations as well as his rifle.  ‘Such boys they look,’ Malone wrote in his diary; ‘still they must be sturdy.’  The Marines had expected to take over a reasonably established trench system…. A heavy thunderstorm, which drenched the Marines as they trudged up the slopes to the isolated pot-holes which constituted the Anzac firing line, filled their cup of misery.  ‘I have now been given some so-called Marines and Naval Battalions,’ Birdwood wrote despairingly, ‘who are so as I can see nearly useless.  They are special children of Winston Churchill, immature boys with no proper training, and I am quite afraid of them giving me away someday.’

                   No doubt, the Marines were also unimpressed with the Anzacs.  ‘Everything was chaos,’ writes one, ‘and nobody knew where anyone was….one met Australians all over the place, wandering around, drinking tea, and having pot shots at anything they saw.’  In spite of heavy losses-amounting to nearly 50 per cent – largely due to their own inexperience, the Marines held on with admirable tenacity until the reorganisation of the shattered Anzac battalions was completed.”

  And so, in these conditions Arthur James Beechey, aged 18, lost his life.  He was an old boy of Reading School and worked for Messers Dymore Brown and Son until he enlisted in July 1914.  His father was in the Army. (Reading Standard July 3rd 1915)