Private Archie COLES
Private Archie COLES
Born 20 January 1892 Died 28 March 1916
Archie Coles was born and brought up in Simpson, the third of eight children of Benjamin and Ruth Coles. Benjamin was a platelayer on the railway and the family lived in a house, long since demolished, opposite The Walnuts.
Archie attended Woughton and Simpson School, leaving at the end of 1905 when he was 13. It is likely that he became an agricultural labourer; that was his occupation at the time of the 1911 census.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War 1 in August 1914 Archie enlisted in the army, along with his brothers Tom and George. He joined the 1st Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry – the Buckinghamshire Battalion.
In July 1915 the battalion was deployed on the Western Front near the village of Hébuterne in northern France. The German trenches were just 800 yards away, to the east.
On 28 March 1916 Archie was killed instantly when a German shell exploded in his trench.
He is buried at Hébuterne Military Cemetery.
Archie is also commemorated on the memorial at St Martin’s Church, Fenny Stratford.
PrivateArchie COLES
20 January 1892 - 28 March 1916
The village of Hébuterne in northern France is 20 kilometres south-west of Arras and 15 kilometres north of the town of Albert. For most of the First World WarHébuterne was very close to the front line that formed the Western Front. By 1916 the village consisted of a long street with a half-ruined church and a few run-down farms whose tenants had left. The cottages served as advanced headquarters and billets for the military. A few hundred yards to the east was a complex of trenches. They faced the trenches of the German army 800 yards or so further east, near the village of Gommecourt. The woodland of Gommecourt Park was the westernmost point of the whole of the German trenchline in France.
From early in the war the Hébuterne trenches were occupied by French troops but in the summer of 1915 they were replaced by regiments of the British Army. One of them was the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
The 1st Battalion of the Ox and Bucks – the Buckinghamshire Battalion - had arrived in France at the end of March 1915. After time at Ploegsteert Wood they arrived at Hébuterne in late July and took over the trenches from the French. And there the battalion stayed over the winter and into the spring of 1916.
The Battalion’s War Diary records that on Sunday 26th March, after a few days’ rest away from the front line, the troops returned to the trenches, relieving the Gloucestershire Regiment. Monday 27th was a ‘quiet day’. On Tuesday 28th March 1916, one hundred years ago today, the diary entry, in the same handwriting, reads ‘Battalion in trenches. Rather more shelling in morning. 8 casualties in FT 10/4 from a 5.9 shell. 3 killed 5 wounded.’
The three killed were Private A. Wakelin, aged 40, from Leighton Buzzard, Private Walter Cross from Stantonbury, and Private Archie Coles from Simpson. He was 24.
Archie Coles was born in Simpson on 20th January 1892. His parents, Benjamin and Ruth already had two sons, Thomas and William and the family lived in a house, long since demolished, opposite The Walnuts. Benjamin worked as a platelayer on the railway. Over the following fourteen years, five more children were born: Hilda, John, George, Emily and Harold. In due course George Coles would become the father of Eric and Dorrie, who are here today, and of their brother Dennis. Also here today is June Lines, daughter of Harold Coles. Harold was nine years old when his brothers enlisted.
Archie Edgar Benjamin Coles was baptised here in St Thomas’ Church on 13 May 1894 at the same ceremony as his older brother William and younger sister Hilda.
Archie attended Woughton and Simpson School. According to the school’s Log Book he was not the most diligent of pupils: between October 1900 and November 1903 there are six entries in which successive masters –John Bool, E.D.Roberts and John Cullom - recorded his irregular attendance or lateness. However, on 27th October 1905 Archie did attend the Labour Certificate Exam in Fenny Stratford, along with other boys of his age, one of whom was George Bowler, Bill’s father. Evidently Archie satisfied the examiners as his Labour Certificate arrived at the school on 13th November and was duly forwarded to his parents. So he probably started work around the time of his 14th birthday and it is likely that, in common with many local lads, he became an agricultural labourer. That was the occupation recorded against his name six years later in the 1911 Census.
In the autumn of 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war Archie, together with his older brother Tom and younger brother George enlisted, probably at one of the recruitment rallies in Fenny Stratford. He joined the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and was assigned to the Buckinghamshire Battalion. We know nothing for certain about his experiences in the ranks beyond the official accounts in the regimental records. The Battalion trained in East Anglia before disembarking in France at the end of March 1915. They arrived in Hébuterne in late July 1915.
We know much more about his death there one hundred years ago today. That single, anonymous sentence in the War Diary - 3 killed, 5 wounded - is not the only account.
On 29th March, the day after Archie’s death, Captain Arthur Lloyd-Baker, commander of D Company wrote to his father in Simpson:
Dear Mr Coles. I am afraid I have very bad news to give you. Your son was in the front trenches yesterday when a German shell exploded quite close to him. He was killed instantly – you may be sure that he didn’t suffer at all. He was buried this morning in our little Cemetery here, the place is carefully noted, and his grave will be well looked after. Please accept my very sincere sympathy and that of his comrades in arms.
Captain Lloyd-Baker was 33 in 1916, nine years older than Archie. Educated at Eton, he had been a master at Cheltenham College before the war. During the course of the war he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, was awarded the DSO and was mentioned in despatches three times. He died in 1979 at the age of 96, 62 years after Archie’s death.
An account of Archie’s death of a different kind is to be found in a poem which also reached the Coles family. It was written by B. Souster, a Bletchley man and one of the comrades in arms that Captain Lloyd-Baker refers to.
I was in a trench o’er Flanders plain,
Glory was sought and won.
Right hard we toiled the long night through
And longed for the rising sun.
At last it came, we sought relief
To rest our weary heads.
A gun sent forth the screeching death.
Alas, our rest had fled.
A score more guns roared out at once,
Shells flew around thick and fast.
My comrade, standing by my side,
Yelled ‘Fight boys to the last’.
A shell struck right in front of me.
It hurled me to the ground.
I struggled from that filthy mud
And tried to look around.
My mouth was full, my eyes were blind,
I tried to see, in vain.
Mud clung to every inch of me,
It seemed to clog my brain.
I dashed the filth from out of my eyes
And faintly murmured ‘Arch’.
Then I saw him, as in a dream,
His face was white and still.
I crawled to him and spoke his name,
And gently raised his head.
But not a word he answered back,
Poor Archie, he was dead.
On the same day that Captain Lloyd-Baker wrote his letter, E.J.Helm, a Chaplain in the Gloucestershire Regiment also put pen to paper:
Dear Mr Coles. I am very sorry indeed to have to send you such very bad news. Your son, in the Bucks Battalion, was killed by a shell yesterday afternoon, and we laid him to rest in the military cemetery this morning. The regiment will place a cross on the grave. As many officers and men as could be spared came to the funeral this morning. With every sympathy for you and yours in your great loss.
The two letters probably arrived together at the Coles family home, not a 100 yards from where we are gathered this morning.
Hébuterne Military Cemetery is situated to the west of the village, the ‘safe’ side, away from the front-line trenches. The cemetery was started in August 1915. Archie Coles’ grave is number 1 in Row A of Plot 1. There are nineteen other headstones in Row A, all for men of the Buckinghamshire Battalion who died between August 1915 and April 1916 – a Captain, a 2nd Lieutenant, a corporal, two lance corporals and fourteen privates, including Private Wakelin and Private Cross who also died 100 years ago today. Today there are over 750 graves in the cemetery and, like all of them, Archie’s is well looked after, just as Captain Lloyd-Baker promised 100 years ago. Unlike many other Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries the graves are in irregular rows and scattered groups. That’s because the site was previously an orchard and the dead were buried among the trees.
So Archie Coles, who grew up here in Simpson, a village then with twelve orchards, has lain for the past 100 years alongside his comrades in a French orchard. One of the eleven fallen fruit of Simpson.
We remember him today.
Peter Barnes
Simpson
28 March 2016