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[pearsonica]

I have recently been contacted by a John Wrightson. He found a posting of mine on the Birmingham History Forum web pages about my Great Uncle Captain Alfred Christopher Pearson (known as Chris as his father was also Alfred). He found a letter that Chris wrote to his grandmother about her son James Atkinson-Jowett of the 6th Bn Kings own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He had recently heard from his mother Caroline Pearson that James had been Killed on 16th September 1916 during the battle of the Somme. Unfortuately the letters are too large to post but I would be interested to know if anybody else has found letters of Condolance and if by chance they were from my Gt Grandmother as she did contact my parents of Officers who served in the 9TH Battalion of the RWR. Te reason she wrote to Chris about James was that they went to school together at Giggleswyke in Yorkshire and latter studdied together at Lincoln College Oxford.

LETTERS OF CONDOLENCE SENT BY FRIENDS AND FELLOW OFFICERS TO MRS FANNY ATKINSON-JOWETT FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF HER SON Lt JAMES ATKINSON-JOWETT, 6 KOYLI, KILLED IN ACTION DURING THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME 16^TH SEPTEMBER 1916

Some background information

John Wrightson is descended from Mrs Atkinson-Jowett (nee Thornton) via his paternal grandfather’s mother, Eliza Annie Thornton who was Fanny’s illegitimate first child. James Atkinson-Jowett was her younger stepbrother and therefore John’s great great step-uncle. The original letters are lost but we know that this typed transcript reproduced here was first made for Mrs Atkinson-Jowett. An original copy was in papers my father inherited from his father in 1974. We kept a photo-copy and gave the inherited copy to the KOYLI Regimental Museum collection, now held in Doncaster Library.

James Atkinson-Jowett was Fanny’s second and last child following her marriage to Nathan Atkinson-Jowett. James was born in 1893 at Bentley near Doncaster. His father was a middle-aged widower who had retired as a gentleman farmer to Rostholme, near Bentley, after handing over to his eldest son substantial property in Manningham, Bradford that he held in trust under the terms of his own father’s will. James was named after Nathan’s deceased father who had been a wealthy man of business in mid-Victorian Bradford, one-time Alderman of the city and one of the founding patrons of Leeds University. James junior was a boarder at Giggleswick School, a popular choice for the merchant families of the West Riding, from1906 until 1911 when he went up to Lincoln College Oxford to read Theology. He appears to have been a devout Anglican and it seems possible that he was intending to become an ordained minister. After his death his mother had brass commemorative plaques installed in the churches of Bentley, Bolton (in Bradford) and Caton (near Lancaster), places where he had lived and worshipped, and donated funds to Giggleswick School to endow a perpetual scholarship in his memory.

Lt James Atkinson-Jowett was amongst the many casualties suffered during an evening assault on the enemy-held Gird Trench south of Gueudecourt village on Saturday 16^th September 1916, the second day of the battle of Flers-Courcelette, the third British offensive of the wider Somme campaign. After initial successes on 15^th September, when British tanks were used in combat for the first time, the attack’s momentum had stalled in front strongly fortified German lines. For most of 16^th September British units were pinned down in recently taken forward positions by heavy enemy fire. At 6.20 pm part of 43 Infantry Brigade, two companies each from 6KOYLI and 6Bn Somerset LI, was ordered to restart the attack at 6.55 pm. It was a futile endeavour. The men were caught by enfilading machine-gun fire as they advanced across open ground. Survivors took cover in an unmarked shallow trench in no-man’s land and held out until they were able to withdraw back to their start line under cover of darkness. In the two KOYLI companies that took part in the attack, three out of the five officers were killed and one wounded; one hundred other ranks were lost either killed or wounded. Most of the soldiers’ bodies were either not recovered or were not individually identifiable when the permanent military cemeteries were created in that locality some time later. Consequently their names are recorded on the Thiepval Monument. One of the Somerset LI survivors of that evening assault was Arnold Ridley (died 1984) who later wrote the ‘The Ghost Train’ and was Private Godfrey in the TV sitcom ‘Dad’s Army’.

Robert Alexander Gordon Cane (died circa 1964) was James Atkinson-Jowett’s company commander when he was first commissioned into 11Bn KOYLI during 1914. He was wounded in June 1915, whilst on attachment to the 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers at Gallipolli, and subsequently relinquished his commission due to ill-health sometime during 1916. He became headmaster of Saffron Walden School and later of Kinmel School, Abergele. He was a friend and lifelong correspondent of Captain, later Sir, Basil Henry Liddell-Hart, (died 1970) the noted military historian and The Times’ military affairs correspondent during the inter-war years. I’m pretty sure that Liddell-Hart was first commissioned into 11 KOYLI at around the same time as Atkinson-Jowett and if so service in 11Bn is what links all three men. Like Atkinson-Jowett, Liddell-Hart transferred to 6Bn KOYLI and saw action at Ypres and in the first stages of the Somme offensive until the battle for Mametz Wood on 16^th July where he was gassed. He never returned to the front-line and remained on light duties until he was medically discharged from the army in 1924, following two heart attacks that may have been caused by the after-effects of gassing.

Regards

Biggs