Category Archives: Other Regiments

Albert Edward Haines

Army, Other Regiments, Registered War Grave, Ypres

Albert Edward Haines
Private 201694
1st/4th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment

Division 79
Extension

Albert Edward Haines was the youngest son of Walter and Annie Haines. He is remembered on the kerbs of his parents grave although the lead lettering is now badly damaged and the actual wording very indistinct.  Albert died 17 August 1917.

Haines AE grave

 

Albert Haines is actually buried in New Irish Farm  Cemetery Location X.E.I.  This cemetery was begun in August 1917 and used until November 1917, and again from April to May 1918.  By the time of the Armistice it contained 73 graves in Plot 1.  After the Armistice it was used as a concentration cemetery taking graves from smaller cemeteries and also bodies from the battlefields.  There are now 4,500 casualties commemorated in the cemetery. The body of Albert Haines was initially buried in one of these smaller cemeteries at the time of his death and moved after the Armistice.  

Albert Haines would have played a part in the action (The Battle of Langemarck),  outlined below which was part of the Third Battle of Ypres.   On the 16th August the British, on the northern flank of the battlefield,  took the village of Langemarck, although the they were subjected to strong counter attacks. On the southern flank, the most important, there was failure. (Martin Matrix Evans)  It is not known whether Albert Haines was killed in action or if he died of wounds.*

  For the 1st/4th’s their time in Flanders was one of their worst.  It seemed to the battalion that they were given impossible objectives and reinforced with inadequate reserves.  In the attacks, at dawn on the 16th August, the 48th Division made little progress and they were reduced to hanging about under heavy shell fire moving into gaps against threatened counter attacks.  The battles against pill boxes, gun pits and fortified farms were slow.  Each objective was taken methodically by bombers rushing, as best they could through a ground of liquid mud in full kit, and throwing bombs through loop holes this was followed by concentrated machine gun fire.  “A” company was hit by the opening barrage which killed their captain and wounded their other officer but they managed through the day to repel some small attempts of counter attack.  “B” company also experienced difficulty getting through the barrage and spent most of the day in support of “A” company and without actually coming into contact with the enemy lost forty men.  “C” company took part in fighting around the Langemarck road and lost all their officers and fifty men.  “D” company did not move until the barrage had eased and spent most of the day in support of the Buckinghamshire battalion, they lost thirty men.  By the end of the day one third of the 1st/4th Battalion’s strength had been lost.   (From “The School,The Master, The Boys and The V.C” thestory of the  Alfred Sutton School War Memorials )

Harold Guille

Army, Canadian, Commemorated name/s, Graves, Other Regiments, Reading School War Memorial, Ypres

Harold Guille
Private 442387
7th Battalion Canadian Infantry (British Columbia Regiment)

 Divison 19

Guille H photo  CIMG2094

Harold Guille  was the son of Mr. & Mrs. George C. Guille , of 28, Castle Crescent, Reading. The 1901 census indicated that Harold had two older sisters and a step brother. At the time Harold was fifteen and no occupation is given for him. Further information pertaining to Harold Guille is held in Canadian records and 1911 census however, the CWGC register indicated that he was the husband of May Guille, of Nelson, British Columbia.   He was killed in action on the 15th April 1916, aged 31. 

Harold Guille is buried in Railway Dugouts Burial Ground (Transport Farm), near Ypres. Plot IV. Row E. 30.  The burial ground was started during 1915 and during 1916 and 1917 the farm was usedby Advanced Dressing Stations. After the Armistice the burial ground became a concentration cemetery.

 The Second Battle of Ypres drew to a conclusion on 24th May 1915.  With it the intense action of the conflict assumed a lower key but, although quieter in many respects, men were still suffering and dying in terrible circumstances.  Shelling, mining and raids of one sort or another took their toll of lives.  Actions to straighten out the line took place at Bellwaarde Ridge and Hooge Château in July 1915, the British used a massive mine and the Germans used “liquid fire” to reek destruction.  Working parties moved through sickening mud and slime, all around the smell of unburied dead.  Later in the year the Battle of Loos began and ended, here the British used gas for the first time.  Gallipoli was finally evacuated in January 1916, Verdun was attacked in February and the “Big Push” planned for the summer.  Around Ypres the shelling, mining, counter mining, trench raids, snow, rain, frost and lice were endured by both sides.  On both sides men died in abominable circumstances.

Sidney Edwin Grimes and John Arthur Grimes

Army, Commemorated name/s, Other Regiments, Royal Berkshire Regiment

Stanley Edwin Grimes
Private 18476
2nd Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment

 Division 17

Stanley Edwin Grimes was the son of John and Emma Grimes, of 13, Western Elms Avenue, Reading, and the brother of John Arthur Grimes.  He was killed in action on the 12th August 1917, aged 27.

 Stanley Edwin Grimes was a Signaller with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.  He was killed instantaneously when hit by a shell whilst carrying out signalling duties.  Stanley Grimes had joined up in April 1916 and went immediately to Blandford to train as a signaller.  He passed his examinations with First Class Honours and went to France in July 1916.  Throughout the winter he served as a voluntary stretcher bearer and was invalided home in May 1917.  He returned to the front in June 1917.  He had been educated at the Collegiate School, Reading.

 Stanley Edwin Grimes has no known grave.  It is likely that after being struck by a shell that there was no body to bury or the grave may have been lost during the battle.  He is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, Bay 3.

John Arthur Grimes M.C.
Second Lieutenant
1st Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment

John Arthur Grimes was the son of John and Emma Grimes, of 13, Western Elms Avenue, Reading, and the husband of Ella Maud Grimes, of 1, Clarence Street, Brighton.

He died on the 7th March 1918, aged 34(37).  He is buried in Metz-en-Coutre Communal Cemetery British Extension, Pas de Calais.  The village was captured by the 10th and 11th King’s Royal Rifle Corps on the 4th and 5th April, 1917, and evacuated on the 23rd March, 1918, and retaken by the 1st Otago Regiment the following 6th September.  The village was noted for its extensive system of underground cellars.  The original burials were made in Plots I and II.  Further Plots were made after the Armistice.   The early months of 1918 were fairly quiet marked by a feeling of something about to happen.  Men were tired but in good spirits, they were daily involved in building new reorganised defensive systems.  Similar to the German, defence in depth, the new British system comprised a “Forward zone” , basically an out post line, the “Battle Zone” which was to be the main line of defence some 2,000 – 3,000 yards behind the Forward Zone and finally at a similar distance behind the Battle Zone the “Corps Line”.  The army itself was also under going reorganisation and merging of units.  Fatigues were hazardous when working parties  were in range of enemy artillery or sniper fire; getting to the work area across a cratered and muddy battlefield also took its toll.  Raids were frequent, some times ill-though-out and often so clumsy in their execution that the Germans  were well aware that the British were coming.  Meanwhile the Germans were carefully planning their impending Spring Offensive and Haig was eagerly awaiting an attack he knew must come. J.A. Grimes died of gaspoisoning whilst trying to rescue his orderly who had been buried in a trench which was damaged by a heavy bombardment of shelling which came after midnight on 6th March 1918.  Amidst the high explosive shells were ‘rum jars’ containing phosgene gas which disguised the presence of the gas and caused injury to a further two officers and 29 other ranks.  A photograph of john Grimes can be found in the book: The China Dragon’s Tales The 1st Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment in the Great War.

The 1901 census indicates that John Grimes senior was a cabinet salesman and that he was assisted in this job by his oldest son John. The family were living in western Elms Road. His younger brother Stanley and sister Annie were then twelve and fourteen years respectively, no occupation is given for either of them; it is possible that they were still in school. Like the other families living in Western Elmes Road the family employed a domestic servant.   In 1911 Stanley is a boarder at a publichouse in Warwickshire and his occupation is given as an Ironmongers assistant. He obviously enlisted in the county and joined the local battalion. The landlord and lady of the public house had a daughter about the same age as Stanley but whether they had an intimate relationship is unknown.  In 1911 John is a boarder in Oxfordshire, he still has the same occupation.