Return to Richebourg

And I've travelled down today, coming across on the Eurotunnel, down the motorway, and swung off into this area that's near to the town of Bethune, which is a big rest area, training area, stores and supplies area for the British Army on the Western Front, particularly in the first two years of the war.

But it's brought us into an area where in the spring of 1916, the men of the 11th, 12th and 13th Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd South Downs Battalions, came into this area with the rest of the units of the division they were a part of, the 39th Division, which was one of the last Kitchener's Army, new army divisions to come across to France. These were battalions that had been formed in 1914, but didn't come across to the Western Front until March of 1916.

Not because they were no good or they weren't wanted, by a quirk of circumstance they found themselves being held back until the British Expeditionary Force, the army on the Western Front, needed them as it expanded its line along that front and the size of the BEF grew and by the spring of 1916 the Battle of the Somme was looming in the distance and men would be needed for that.

But their part was, although they took part in the Battle of the Somme, their part was not really in the early stage of that battle directly, although they would take part in one of a number of diversionary attacks along the British front to try and confuse the Germans as to where the true offensive would take place.

And for them, that rendezvous with fate on this landscape of the Western Front would be at a place called the Boar's Head at Rishborg which we've discussed in previous podcasts about the South Downs but this is a kind of Rishborg revisited and we're heading in that direction now but I've started off behind the lines just as those men in 1916 did and my own personal journey with the South Downs battalions began many many years ago when I Being a student in Sussex, having been born and grown up in

Sussex, I started to look at the history of the Royal Sussex Regiment, research Sussex war memorials, and I kept coming across this date of the 30th of June, 1916. And although my Great War library was not as big then as it is now, Even if I look now, I would find very little mention in some publications, like the official history, for example, no mention whatsoever of that attack on the 30th of June, 1916 at Rishborg.

And I kind of felt that there was perhaps a story that was missing from the pages of history. So I began to research the South Downs battalions. And of course, back in the 1980s, veterans of those battalions were still alive. And I found myself heading on that path to track down the last surviving veterans of the South Downs Battalions. Now, those South Downs Battalions had been formed in Sussex in 1914 on an idea of Lieutenant Colonel Claude Lowther.

He was an MP for Westmoreland and Cumberland, but he had a house at Hurstmanstow in Sussex and he'd served in the Imperial Yeomanry. in the Boer War. and been recommended for a Victoria Cross for an action there. And he'd learned a lot about mounted infantry. And at the beginning of the First World War, he tried to convince the War Office that they didn't have enough mounted infantry and he would form a Sussex unit of that. But they weren't after mounted infantry.

They had cavalry who had been trained as mounted infantry now. They had yeomanry. They were after infantry battalions to be formed as part of the new army, Kitchener's Army, as it quickly became known.

So Lowther instead... formed one of those what was the first south downs battalion and became the 11th battalion royal sussex regiment formed all over sussex he used all of his contacts so he had men brought in from chichester he knew a retired colonel in bognor and he appointed his regimental sergeant major rsm may also from Bognor, and they brought a contingent over from there, but towns like Hastings and Bexhill and Eastbourne, all supplied men, as well as Lewes and various other towns and

villages across Sussex. And so, for the first time in the Great War, a battalion was being formed that represented the whole county, a kind of powers battalion, really. And such was the response, 1,100 men enlisted in the very first day, filling that battalion instantly that a second and a third South Downs battalions were subsequently formed as well.

And they went under canvas at Cooton Beach in Sussex, Cooton Camp as they called it, where Lowther kind of ran his own private army there until the War Office took over the following July, July 1915. And initially they just turned up in their civilian clothes and paraded, They slept in bell tents. Eventually he was able to provide huts for them, pretty big huts that kind of accounted for an entire company of men in some way.

cases and they spent quite a harsh winter of 1914-15 there and then they served in various places on the Thames estuary area and then went to Aldershot to do military training and ended up at Whitley Camp where they remained until they went overseas in early 1916 and they were part of the 116th Infantry Brigade, the 14th Battalion of Hampshire, the Portsmouth Powers were in the same brigade as them and they were part of that wider 39th Division.

And finally, ready for war, they crossed to France and made their way by train to Hazelbrook, not far from where I am now, and then detrained and marched up through villages like Merville and Estaires, coming up to nearer the very front line. And their first period of service took them into the trenches not far from where I am now, places like Givenchy and Festerbutt, static parts of the line which had not really moved since 1914. A lot of the trenches were breastworks.

They were built up above ground level because of the flooded nature of the ground. And they lost men in the day-to-day activities of trench warfare, trench raiding, snipers, rifle grenades, trench mortars, all this kind of stuff around Givenchy.

There was a lot of mining activity and there's a crater blown there called the Ducks Bill which took out quite a few South Downs men and there were some gallantry awards given for bravery and some of the fighting there but as their first few months of active service drew to an end in these quiet sectors they were given forewarning that they were going to take part in a major attack and that attack was not the assault on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, but one of these diversionary

attacks at a place called the Boar's Head at Richebourg, just south of the village of Neuchapel where the big offensive had taken place in 1915 where the Indians had fought, the Indian Corps. This area had also seen an assault by men from Sussex by the 2nd Battalion and more importantly the 1st 5th Sink Ports Battalion on the 9th May 1915 as part of the Battle of Albers Ridge.

And the same bit of ground where those lads, for example, from the village of Wadhurst, when I think something like 23 men from the village were killed in a single day and many others wounded, that same bit of ground was now going to see another attack because some of the German trenches had been captured and it formed a kind of salient, a bend in the line, and somebody looked at a map and thought we can straighten that out, that's where we'll attack.

And that's what brought the South Downs into this assault. Now it was very hastily planned and in some respects not really planned at all. There was going to be a short bombardment and then they were going to go over the top. And one of the battalion commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Grisewood, whose brother had who'd only just died of pneumonia in a dressing station at Merville and whose younger brother was a platoon commander in his battalion.

I took one look at this plan and thought, this is going to be a disaster with heavy losses. And he said to the Brigadier, I'm not prepared to sacrifice my battalion as cannon fodder. One of the veterans I interviewed, Ron Short, who was in the 11th Battalion, who was wounded at Richebourg, later became an officer in the Queen's Regiment. He was one of those who said he witnessed this and spoke about this when I went to interview him in his house in Eastbourne back in the 1980s.

And that kind of statement by a battalion commander to a brigadier, brigadier general, had to be taken seriously. And instead of listening to him, they decided that he was no longer fit to command.

So they sent him home, they bowler-hatted him, relieved him of his command, sent him back to Blighty, and the 11th Battalion that was meant to lead the assault, his battalion, was relegated to a support role, and the 12th and the 13th, the 2nd and 3rd South Down Battalions would be the ones that would go in to take the men into the attack. So this was kind of the eve of the battle.

This area close to where we are now, the place called Le Paco, was a training area where the men trained on a map of the battlefield laid out with white tapes where they kind of just walked across it. It all looked very simple and easy, but they would discover a very different kind of reality when they went over the top in the early hours of the 30th of June 1916 in that attack on the Boer's Head. And I'm going to leave here now this area behind the front and head back.

onwards ever onwards to the Cinder Track, this old track that went from the Rue du Bois in Richebourg itself up towards where the frontline positions were and where, for the men of Sussex history, would repeat itself just as the 2nd and the 5th Sink Ports Battalions had been annihilated there in 1915. A similar fate awaited these men and we'll talk about that more when we get to the Cinder Track itself.

So we've driven down through Ville Chapelle, up through some of the little villages, to Richebourg village itself, and then come down onto what's called the Rue de Bois, the street of the wood. There's copses all over.

here it's quite a wooded area but the rue du bois was a principal road that ran in the direction of bethune i'm looking to my right now in that direction the rue du bois runs along there up towards a crossroads which is over to my left near to the village of new chapelle and on that crossroads now is the indian core memorial which some of you have probably been to This area saw fighting in October 1914, and a line was established here.

And then the following spring, just up the road at Neuve Chapelle, the Indian Corps attacked there, pushed the Germans back in that area, and then on 9th May 1915, this was the right flank of the Battle of Albers Ridge. And looking across the fields from where I am now, just in from the Rue du Bois, I can see the rising ground of the Albers Ridge in the background. Now, those of you listening in countries like America or Canada, for you a ridge is a huge promontory, perhaps snow-capped.

But this ridge here in this part of northern France, it's only a few metres, tens of metres, I think it's something like 30 or 40 metres above sea level. That's what designated a ridge in the standards of the geography of this part of France. But it was enough of a rise, you see, for the Germans who were on top of it to dominate this ground. And that's what they'd done since the battles of October 1914.

on the 9th of May 1915 was to try and push them off that ridge with attacks near to villages like Fleur Bay and Fromelles and Neuve Chapelle and over here at Richebourg this is the right flank and I'm standing on a track that comes out from the Rue du Bois that was marked on British trench maps as the cinder track and it's a track where kind of cinders from fires were laid to give it kind of a gravel effect and it's still very much that today I'm looking at that now and I'll put some pictures of

of this onto the podcast website and here on the 9th of may 1915 amongst the units that assaulted at this point was the first fifth battalion of the royal sussex regiment the sink ports battalion a territorial battalion recruited in the eastern part of the county with eight different companies including one based in the village of Wadhurst.

And here, on the 9th of May 1915, that Wadhurst company, which included the son, two sons of the doctor of Wadhurst, the Fazan family, Roy Fazan, one of them was killed and his brother survived. He would go on to become doctor in Wadhurst himself later in life and name his son Roy in memory of his brother. And that son was killed as a commando officer in Normandy in June 1944. So two Roy Vossans, one killed here at Albers Ridge and one killed in Normandy in 1944.

And in that attack here, And it's just to the right of the cinder track where I'm standing. My friend John, who grew up in that area of Sussex, is just walking up there now. He's very close to the spot where Roy Fazan and some of the other lads were killed. And there's an account of this by Colonel Langham, who was their commanding officer, who talks about some of the men being hit by what he called an acid sprayer.

And one man got hit and his equipment caught fire and his ammunition cooked off and he was a ball of flame and he killed himself rather than succumb to That fate was a gruesome account that he kind of wrote of that battle. And it resulted in heavy casualties to those Sussex lads and 23 men from Wadhurst being killed here on one day. And Wadhurst is only a very, very small Sussex village even today. So it would have had a devastating effect on them in 1915.

Something that's still remembered in the village and they twinned with Albers some years ago here on the battlefields and they have a regular commemoration of the Albers Ridge Battle here every year. But by a strange quirk of fate, just over a year later, the South Downs Battalions, who I'm following here in this podcast, were brought to the same part of the battlefield. And I guess that perhaps they didn't even know it. I mean, this was an area spoken about, perhaps the Cinder Track.

Perhaps they didn't realise that they were back in in a position where so many Sussex men had already died in 1915. And there were men from Wadhurst and the surrounding villages who are now serving in the South Downs Battalions who may well have had mates and family members in that 5th Battalion who were here the year before. But that quirk of fate had brought them into this diversionary attack here at the boar's head.

And as I'm looking straight down the track now, the line came in from the left. There's a whole area of drainage ditches here that kind of crisscrossed the battlefield. And some of those were just behind the British front line and others were just in front of the British front line. And that presented a bit of an obstacle for assaulting troops. So many of the men were issued with portable bridges to try and cross some of those drainage ditches. ditches.

And the line came in from the left, as we've said. The trenches here were breastworks, so they were positions built up above ground level because the ground here is very wet and if you dig into it, it'll flood. So it was a mixture of trench and position above ground level known as a breastwork. And it crossed the cinder track, then went across to my right from where I'm standing now. And there's a big area of trees in the distance where I can see some gulls.

buzzing around the tops of the trees there. And it did a kind of dog-leg turn and went down towards Festerbert and Givenchy, which are in the distance, across to my right. And that curve, that dog-leg turn, was the boar's head, the salient in the line, with the British trenches very close, because this had all once been German, the positions which had been captured in 1915. And that was the salient that this attack was meant to bite off.

And this was the diversionary attack to try and draw German soldiers away, draw their attention away from the Battle of the Somme happening further south. So this was the big push for the south down. This was their first time in action. Two entire battalions of around 650 to 700 plus men in each battalion going forward. The 11th whose colonel, Colonel Grisewood, had protested against the attack, had been pulled out. They were now in a support role.

They would supply just one company, D Company, to take part in the assault, although some of their troops were obviously holding the line opposite. That was commanded by Captain Cassells and included amongst his platoon officers was Colonel Grisewood's brother, younger brother, Francis Grisewood. So two entire battalions would attack, one on my left and one on my right, crossing out into no man's land in the early hours of the 30th of June, 1916, just before dawn.

So just enough kind of half light to see where you were going and just before full daylight so that you weren't completely exposed. And the bombardment was kind of short and sweet, dropped some shells from the divisional artillery onto these positions, cut some of the German wire, but as the men attacked and the whistles blew and they moved into no man's land, they came under immediate German fire from the Saxon regiment opposite them.

and that fire began to reduce the ranks of the men moving forward. They attacked in waves, four waves, with men at a walking pace with their rifles forward with bayonets fixed and men carrying the assault bridges to get across the ditches. They got hit first, the bridges were dropped, very few got to the ditches to enable the men to cross so what you see is men scrambling to get down those ditches and up the other side and that ground being swept by machine gun fire.

In the area around the Boar's Head itself, men from the 13th and the 12th Battalion get in. Of the South Downs veterans that I interviewed, Ron Short was in this battle, he was wounded in it. He got into the ground in D Company of the 11th Battalion who he served with and fought his way into that position. But I also interviewed one of the more incredible veterans of the South Downs Battalions, Albert or Bert Banfield, who was from Hove. Him and his brother Marcus had joined up together.

They were from quite a middle-class family, quite sheltered really. And the realities of army life in the ranks was a bit of a hard shock to them in many respects. And they ended up in the signal section of the 13th Battalion. And I'm looking across to where they went over on the 30th, got into the German trenches and set up their signal post to signal back.

So the German trenches were entered and in one party of the 12th Battalion under Company Sergeant Major Nelson Victor Carter they actually got into the next German line. And Nelson Carter was an interesting character.

He'd served as a regular soldier before the war and had been in the artillery, had tattoos of Buffalo Bill on both his forearms but it ended up with a stomach problem which had resulted in him being discharged from the army and he tried to join the police and in fact tried to re-enlist under a different name Nelson Smith but that was unsuccessful and his police application was also unsuccessful because of the injury and surgery that he had on his stomach.

but he instead became the Commissioner of the Old Town Cinema in Eastbourne and he knew Colonel Lowther who formed the South Downs Battalions and Colonel Lowther asked him to join and I mentioned RSM May earlier who became the original Sergeant Major when these men joined the South Downs Battalions they were given a special number which had a prefix SD, SD for South Downs and Sergeant Major May He was SD1 and Nelson Victor Carter was SD4. So they were amongst the very first men.

to enlist and all of these original South Downs men all have that SD prefix. It went up to over 5,000 by the time they'd recruited all the men just prior to conscription coming in in 1916. So Sergeant Major Carter, Nelson Victor Carter, had led a group in.

He was armed only with a sidearm and he shot a German machine gun crew with it, took the machine gun over and then turned it on the Germans and they got into the second line position and the fighting went on for several hours but gradually the group of men who got into those trenches was reduced to almost nothing, all the officers by a handful became casualties and it was clear that they couldn't hold on to this position so one of the surviving officers gave the order to withdraw and the

withdrawal back across no man's land began.

And Sar Major Nelson Victor Carter, being a big man he was over six foot tall went out scooped up some of the wounded carried them in went backwards and forwards made sure lads who were wounded got help to get back to the trenches meanwhile under fire of course all the time and they just got back into their own position when they thought they got everyone in and a lad from Eastbourne who he'd known before the war was calling out from no man's land and Nelson Victor Carter couldn't resist going

back out to get him found him brought him in and just as he got him to the parapet a shot rang out and Nelson Victor Carter and Victor Carter was killed instantly. And for that he was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. So this was a battle which had cost the South Downs Battalion's deer over 360 killed and 1,100 wounded and about 50-60 prisoners of war. The Germans photographed them before they were marched off to the rear area somewhere up near Lille.

And I remember back in the days before the internet, I know it's hard to kind of imagine that now, and even before the days of computer databases, of kind of going through the records in soldiers died of the Great War for the South Downs Battalions and picking out all the men who died on the 30th of June 1916 and then looking at where they were born and where they enlisted and looking them up on war memorials.

And even then I was able to calculate that something like 77 men towns and villages were affected by the casualties that day, just by the dead. And when you factor in the 1,100 wounded, then there can have been very few places in Sussex that didn't lose somebody, either killed, wounded or missing on the 30th of June 1916.

When I used to go and see Albert Bamfield and some of the other veterans, They often spoke about how the kind of spirit of those battalions was lost in this attack when the originals were killed. And one day I went to see Albert Bamfield, and it was close to the 30th of June anniversary and we were talking about it, and he said, yes, he said, it was as if in that attack it was the day, really, the day Sussex died. And that phrase, the day Sussex died...

He allowed me to use in an article that was published on the 70th anniversary of the battle in 1986 and it's been used many, many times since. It was the anniversary of the battle just the other day and I saw it all over Facebook and Twitter and various other social media sites and it's really nice to see Albert's words, or Burt Banfield's words. ringing out, resonating after all those years. Most people who write that have no idea where it comes from, and it comes from him, the day Sussex died.

Edmund Blunden, who was in reserve, who watched this attack, later said that when he looked at the dead, there closed the youth and maturity of many a Sussex worthy. It was a devastating day for Sussex. And I'm standing now on the edge of the fields where so many of those Sussex men died. And the sky has opened up, there's a drizzle coming down. And I guess it kind of feels like the tears for the loss of so many Sussex boys here, both in 1915 and 1916.

So this was an attack then that really had pretty much no result. It didn't affect the outcome. of the first day of the Battle of the Somme that took place the next day. It was forgotten in the pages of history. The Sussex newspapers were full of the casualties and if you look them up you see page after page of men listed as killed and missing and inquiries from families about the missing.

Many of the bodies were left in no man's land and weren't buried until the very end of the war and a very high percentage of the dead from this battle do not have a known grave and are commemorated on the Loos Memorial memorial to the missing. But there are some in a cemetery not far from here and that's where we'll head to now to some vast post cemetery where the South Downs dead from the Battle of the Boar's Head are buried. I'm walking in through the entrance of St. Vast Post Cemetery now.

There are in fact two Richebourg villages, Richebourg-St. Vast, where I am now, and Richebourg-Laveuil, which is closer to the Rue de Bois. And this is where most of the dead that could be recovered after the attack of 30 June, this is where they were brought back to for burial. And as we mentioned when we were down near the Boar's Head, many of the dead were left out in no man's land and they couldn't be recovered because why risk live men to bring in dead soldiers?

And their bodies stay out there for pretty much the rest of the war and that ground was very heavily fought over in April of 1918. So the majority of the dead... They're on the Louvre's memorial to the missing. But the ones who were killed just in front of the British front line or were killed going over the top so their bodies fell back into the trenches and some that could be recovered at night, they were brought back here to St. Viles Post to be buried.

And just as the bells of Richebourg ring, village are ringing in the background. I'm just coming into the part of the cemetery where the South Downs lads are buried and I've turned around looking at the Stone of Remembrance Cross of Sacrifice and the two kind of Egyptian style entrance ways to this cemetery and I'm looking at row after row with the Royal Sussex badge on it and And I can see just by looking at the headstones, the SD prefix in front of these lads' numbers.

And here I am looking at the South Downers, those Sussex Worthies, killed in the attack on the 30th of June 1916. Now I've researched pretty much all of these men that are here, and over the years, particularly in those days back in the 80s and early 90s, of scratching around in Sussex... junk shops, I was able to find, recover, save, rescue, whatever you want to call it, the medals and the photographs and the memorial plaques and the memorial scrolls to many of the men buried in this cemetery.

I'm looking now at Lance Corporal F.W. Chandler and I have his medals and paperwork, for example. There's one of the Blaker brothers in here from Worthing. I have his and his brothers' medals. They were both killed on the 30th of June. They were two of about a dozen pairs of brothers that fell that day. One family, the Pannell family from Worthing, lost three sons killed. Not one has a grave. None of them are buried here. They're all on the Lewes Memorial.

And a fourth son was... captured and made prisoner of war, so poor old Mrs Pannell in Worthing received a terrible telegram to say all four sons were missing after this action here at the Boar's Head. And I've just walked round to the next part of the South Downs burial plot here, and there's Private Hill and Private Langford, two very early South Downs men, SD705 and SD428, so they both enlisted in September of 1914. Near them is Lance Sergeant G.E.

May. Now, I mentioned Regimental Sergeant Major May, SD1. This was his eldest son from Bognor, aged only 20, and him and his much younger brother, only a teenager, joined the 1st South Downs together as their father was the RSM. The very youngest son was discharged When the War Office took over in 1915, as being too young, he was eventually conscripted into the artillery at the end of the war.

But he always used to attend the South Downs reunions after the war because he always felt himself a South Downer rather than a gunner. But Lance Sarmage, who's buried here, was born in India when his father was on service there with a regular army and was killed leading his platoon from D Company in the 11th Royal Sussex Battalion. into action near the Boar's Head on the 30th of June 1916. So there's men from all over Sussex.

I can see men from Eastbourne, from Bexhill, from Hastings, Lance Sergeant May from Bognor, there's some men from Chichester, there's Private Blaker, one of the two brothers from Worthing. So it's very much a Sussex plot representing those lads from Sussex by the sea. There was no official pilgrimage of the South Downs, or even the families. I'm sure perhaps some of them travelled on those interwar visits to the battlefields.

But I often used to wonder when I came here for the first time all those years ago, as a young man and now I'm a much older man, I used to wonder even then, Was I the first one to ever visit that lad's grave? And there's a lot more interest in these guys. I mean, when I researched this, no one really had kind of remembered the story of the South Downs Battalions. But gradually interest has grown. There's several books on the subject now. There's a book called The Day Sussex Died.

I think it's out of print now, but it's certainly a book worth having. And there are other casualty rolls and many rolls of honour of Sussex villages that obviously contain details of some of these men because this date is so commonly found on Sussex war memorials. And it's good. During the centenary, when memorials put up in Worthing, there's a memorial to the day Sussex died. And they had ceremonies in Brighton as well.

remembering these men and Bexhill Museum did a special display about Cooton camp during the centenary and it's really good to see this because many of those last veterans Ron Short and Albert Bamfield and many others that I interviewed from the South Downs battalions it was common amongst them when I went to see them in their little Sussex homes or flats. Ron Short lived in a flat full of antiques, incredible kind of things that kind of were the jigsaw pieces of his life.

They would often remark as to why a young man like me back then was so interested in this and that they thought that was a bit strange in some ways but they were pleased to discover someone who wanted to tell their story.

But they were sure that once they faded away then they would disappear into the pages of history and the fact that here we are 110 years nearly later we're still talking about these sussex lads and so many other stories from the great war that will never happen and for me it's it's always special for me to come to visit them here and see their names on the Lewes Memorial, which reads like an A to Z of Sussex surnames when you look at the Royal Sussex Panel.

But this was not the end of the South Downs War. This was just one of their battles. They lost so many men. The character of these battalions was never quite the same again. But men wounded at Rishborg returns. The battalions found their way down to the Somme and fought at Hamel and near Tjapval and Schwabenredout and at the very end of the Somme in November 1916. And then they moved up to Ypres.

and occupied the canal bank sector north of Ypres itself and took part in the third battle in the attack on St Julian and in the later fighting in the approaches to Passchendaele and remained in that sector until they moved back down to the Somme for the German offensive in March 1918 and by then the 2nd South Downs Battalion had been disbanded Only two remained, and they fought side by side in the March Offensive, and then in the Battle of the Lease, they defended the ground around the bluff.

And Lieutenant Colonel H.T.K. Robinson, who commanded the 13th, was killed in that battle on the bluff in April 1918. And he had been here at Richborg. He'd been there on the cinder track in front of the Boers' Head, and he'd witnessed Nelson Victor Carter carry out those brave deeds, and he'd been one of the principal... witnesses to sign off the recommendation for his Victoria Cross.

That was nearly two years before and like so many who survived Richborg their war was not done and the war at some point would still claim them. Colonel Robinson was last seen fighting near his command post and he got hit and fell back into the canal that runs through the bluff and his body was never found after the war. He's listed on the Tynecott Memorial. So many stories amongst these South Downs men and so much of their lives have weaved through mine.

And coming back down to live in the South again, I found myself travelling through those Sussex villages and seeing those names of South Downs men on the Sussex war memorials. And that's brought me closer once more to them and their lives and their fates here on the fields of the Cinder Track and the Boar's Head and around the twin villages of Rishborg. But our journey's not quite done. We've got one more cemetery, one more grave to visit, a little bit up the road at Levante.

I'm on the final phase of my return to Rishborg now, and I've come just down the road to the village of Levante, to the Royal Irish Rifles Graveyard. It's the cemetery that dates from an earlier period of the war when the Royal Irish were in this sector, buried some of their dead here. The Kensington's were just down the road, 13th London Regiment. They buried some of their men, including some of their officers here.

The plot that I'm in towards the back of this graveyard is a collection of graves from the surrounding area, including isolated graves brought in from the Rue du Bois, where I'm standing now. three identified soldiers of the South Downs Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment in front of me. But in this same plot, I can see unknown Royal Sussex men, completely unknown soldiers. I can see Gloucestershire Regiment unknowns.

There was a pioneer battalion in the 39th Division, which was a Gloucestershire Regiment unit. I'm guessing there's a fair chance it's from them. I can see Northamptonshire Regiment men at the back. They attacked along the Cinder Track in May 1915. And it's almost certainly... from the North Ants unit that assaulted there because in the same row is an unknown soldier of the Sink Ports Battalion.

And he's almost certainly one of the men, possibly one of those lads from Wadhurst who died there on the 9th of May 1915. So these were all isolated burials, perhaps in a forward battlefield cemetery that was moved to this one in the 1920s. Nelson Victor Carter He'd been killed going out to try and rescue that lad from Eastbourne and killed as he got back to the British parapet and a shot rang out and he was shot instantly and killed, fell into the British trench and he was buried close by.

So he wasn't buried with the other lads in St Viles Post, he remained there until after the war and his grave could not be permanently maintained in that location. And I guess Private Barton and Private Ford, two original SD men from the 12th Battalion who were buried alongside him, probably were buried under the same circumstances. They both died on the same day, 30th June 1916. And then they were brought in here.

So he's a little bit away from the battlefield where he fell and where his act of gallantry that led to the award of the Victoria Cross took place. Now, all those years ago when I... was on that journey researching these men of the South Downs Battalions. I wasn't just tracing veterans, I was tracing the families of those who were killed.

And I wrote a lot of letters and wrote little articles in local newspapers to try and drum up a bit of interest and quite a few people contacted me with photographs and diaries and letters and all kinds of things. And through a friend I traced the daughter of Nelson Victor Carter, Jesse Baker, who was still living in Eastbourne.

And I called her, explained what I was doing, would she be okay for me to come round and visit her, talk about her father, and she was, so I made an appointment to go and see her in Eastbourne, took the train down there, walked to her house, knocked on the door, terraced house in Eastbourne as there are so many terraced streets in that town, a typical Sussex by the sea town.

with a pier of course and she opened the door and behind her on the wall of the hallway was a frame of medals with a photograph of her father which I instantly recognised and a memorial plaque his British War and Victory Medal and his Victoria Cross they were hanging on the wall of her house and she saw my eyes kind of go to them and we immediately began our discussion and she welcomed me in and we sat down with a cup of tea and she showed me all the photographs she had of her dad and she spoke

about it very interesting conversation I went back to see her a few times and one of the things I asked her is have you ever been to your father's grave because I'd just not long been where I'm standing now myself and She hadn't and the 70th anniversary of his death was coming up and I kind of prompted her, I hope, I prompted her to think about it and she did.

And she contacted her family and they took her over, they brought her over here and she met the Mayor of Levante and I think the Mayor of Richborg and she was treated like a VIP just as she should have been really. Because she told me a lot of stories. That a lot of things were promised of the family because he was a Sussex hero. None of it was delivered. It kind of left them a little bit bitter. And her mother never remarried. This was the love of her life. She never remarried.

So they both kind of lived in the shadow of the loss of Nelson Victor Carter here in 1916. It's something I often talk about on the podcast. How women of that generation... were as much victims as the men who were buried in cemeteries like this where I'm standing now, because in some respects more, perhaps, because they had to live with this grief all of their lives, the shadows of the war cast across their lives. They had to live with that forever. And she was very proud of her father.

She used to wear her dad's VC at commemorative services. They used to have an Albers Ridge Parade, I think, in either Eastbourne or Bexhill, and she used to go to that wearing her dad's medal.

and she was quite well known amongst the local veterans considered to be kind of one of them because of who her dad was and when she died she asked for some of her ashes to be scattered here so so this is the place that not just links me with the south downs and the bravery of Nelson Victor Carter it links me to her Because in some respects, as well as the burial site of her father, this is where she was laid to rest.

And it makes it a very poignant, special place to visit when we think about that. A daughter reunited with a father who she barely knew. She was a baby when he died and she had no clear memories of him. And she was one of hundreds of thousands, maybe more, children who lived through that experience in the aftermath. of the Great War. So this is kind of journey's end, but it's more than that. It's a place of reflection. It's a point where we can see one man singled out for bravery.

But there were so many acts of bravery that day. Military medals, distinguished conduct medals, military crosses and distinguished service orders were all awarded for bravery amongst the officers and men of the South Downs battalions who fought that day. I have a military medal belonging to one of the men who was a stretcher bearer who went out repeatedly to pick up the wounded in no man's land near to those ditches across that landscape of the boar's head. So many acts of bravery.

This is the one that's kind of at the top of that list because it's the ultimate award for gallantry in the British Army. But it brings together so much more. He was, on his headstone now as I'm looking at it, it says SD4, fourth man to enlist. That proud unit of South Downers, the South Downs Battalions. The last veterans, their last meeting in 1979, and I have a group photograph of them with their faces looking up at the camera. I think it was photographed for the Bexhill Papers.

And they thought that was it, the end of their story, the last chapter. But here we are so many years later, and it's much more than that. The pages of this great war history, as we often say, just keep on turning. And every year I find myself... coming across a new story of a South Down soldier, a new photograph, a new postcard showing a picture of the camp at Cooton or when they were at Whitley.

It's very much been part of my Great War journey and I often say on the podcast, it's great to focus on a particular unit or regiment because it gives you an insight into the wider war in so many different ways. But here, with the birdsong around me in this quiet corner of a graveyard in northern France, with the white splash of stone, the cap badge, the Ruslan plume of the Royal Sussex Regiment and the garter, and beneath it, the symbol of the Victoria Cross on Nelson Carter's grave.

Here are all those pathways from the South Downs the woods and the fields of dear old Sussex-by-the-Sea, it all meets here. It meets across this part of the battlefield, forever Sussex, the place where the Southdowns would always call their old front line. You've been listening to an episode of The Old Frontline with me, military historian Paul Reid. You can follow me on Twitter at Somcore. You can follow the podcast at Old Frontline Pod.

Check out the website at oldfrontline.co.uk where you'll find lots of podcast extras and photographs and links to books that are mentioned in the podcast. And if you feel like supporting us, you can go to our Patreon page, patreon.com slash oldfrontline or support us on Buy Me A Coffee at buymeacoffee.com slash oldfrontline. Links to all of these are on our website. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.