488156 Driver Harry Wootton, R.E.

Figure 1. 488156 Driver Harry Wootton, R.E.
(Image from the author’s collection)

NOTE: The postcard photograph above is marked CARTE POSTALE on the reverse side indicating that it was taken in France.

The handwritten note on the back side of the postcard was the first clue in determining and details of Driver Wootton’s service in the Great War of 1914-1918. Someone, perhaps Wootton himself, wrote the following in pencil on the back of the card:

With this information it was possible to check the Ancestry.com web site for his Medal Index Card (MIC). The cards for three Harry Woottons were found. The first card was for Driver Harry Wootton, Regimental Numbers 919 and 488156, who had gone to France on 19 January 1915 and had been awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal for his service. The second card was for Sapper Harry Wootton, Regimental Numbers 258082 and WR/42944, whose card did not show a date of deployment to a theater of the war; hence, he only received the British War Medal and Victory Medal for his service. The third card was for Private Harry Wootton,[1] with five different Regimental Numbers, as he had served in the Manchester Regiment, the Army Service Corps, the Training Reserve, the Labour Corps, and the Royal Engineers. The second and third Medal Index Cards were simple to eliminate as neither of the men had been Drivers and apparently neither of them had served in France. Now all that was required was to verify that the first MIC was that of the man in the photograph.

The first step in this verification was to study the units that Driver Wootton had written on the back of his postcard. The 466^th Field Company, R.E. did indeed serve in the British 46^th Division during the war. The company originally was designated the 1/2^nd North Midland Field Company when it was part of the Territorial Force; hence, the Regimental Number 919 on the MIC. When the company was called up for service during the war as part of the regular forces, Wootton’s Regimental Number was changed to 488156. To verify that this regimental number was one issued to men in the 466^th Field Company, a check was made of the casualties suffered by the company to determine the numbers of the men who died while serving with the company.[2] The casualty list for the company contained 1 Officer and 17 Other Ranks names, 9 of which (52.9%) were in the series 488XXX, making it almost certain that the MIC shown below was that of Driver Harry Wootton and that the postcard photograph shown in Figure 1 above is Harry Wootton.

The remainder of this study will be devoted to the service of Harry Wootton by way of discussing the service of his company during the war. Unfortunately no personal information regarding him could be found on Ancestry.com in the way of a family tree.

Figure 2. The Medal Index Card of 488156 Driver Harry Wootton, R.E.
(Image courtesy of Ancestry.com)

To start Harry Wootton’s story it would be of value to review the service of the 46^th Division during the war.[3] The North Midland Division was a formation of the Territorial Force (TF). It was formed as a result of the reforms of the army carried out in 1908 under the Secretary of State for War, Richard Burdon Haldane and was one of 14 Divisions of the peacetime TF. All units were mobilised for full time war service on 5 August 1914. The units of the 46^th Division concentrated in the Luton area by mid-August 1914.

King George V inspected the Division on 19 February. Advance parties landed at Boulogne on 23 February and eight days later the units began to arrive. Concentration was completed by 8 March. The North Midland was thus the first TF Division to arrive complete in a theatre of war. The first months were spent in the Ypres salient.

On 12 May 1915 the Division was retitled as the 46th (North Midland) Division and the brigades were also retitled. The Division then took part in the following engagements:

On 23 December 1915 the Division was ordered to proceed to Egypt, leaving the Divisional Ammunition Column (for the 55th Division), the Divisional Train (with the 56th Division) and the Mobile Veterinary Section. Most units reached Egypt via Marseilles by 13 January 1916.

After just a few days in Egypt, the move of the Division was countermanded and the units were returned to France, whereupon the Divisional Ammunition Column, the Divisional Train and the Mobile Veterinary Section rejoined the Division. The Division remained in France and Flanders for the rest of the war, taking part in the diversionary attack at Gommecourt on 1 July 1916. In 1917 the Division took part in the following engagements:

During the last year of the war the Division remained heavily engaged and took part in the following battles:

· The Battle of the St. Quentin canal, including the passage of the canal at Bellenglise*

The forward units of the Division were at Sains-du-Nord on 11 November 1918. Not selected to join the Army of Occupation, the Division moved back to Landrecies on 14-15 November. Units moved to the Le Cateau area in early January 1919 and demobilization began. By June it was down to cadre level. The Division reformed as part of the Territorial Army in April 1920.

Like all field companies, the 466^th Field Company of the Royal Engineers would have been composed of 217 men during the Great War. The personnel of the company consisted of the following:

· 9 Senion Non-Commissioned Officers (Company Sergeant Major, Company Quartermaster Sergeant, a Farrier Sergeant and 6 Section Sergeant.

· 14 Junior Non-Commissioned Officers (7 Corporals and 7 2^nd Corporals or Lance Corporals).

· 186 Other Ranks (1 Shoeing Smith, 1 Trumpeter, 1 Bugler, 138 Sappers, 37 Drivers and 8 Batmen).

Driver Harry Wootton had been serving in the Territorial Force when the Great War started. He would have already enlisted in the TF and probably had received a good amount of training with the 1/2^nd North Midland Field Company during its annual exercises, so for practical purposes he was quite ready for active service.

The company mobilized at Derby in August 1914 and it spent the period from September 1914 to January 1915 at Luton, Bedfordshire and Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. This period was spent outfitting the company, training and preparing it for deployment with the division. The company embarked for France in February 1915; however, according to Wootton’s MIC he arrived in France on 19 January 1915. It would appear that while the advance parties of many of the division’s units landed in France on 23 February, the 466^th Field Company sent men ahead as early as mid-January.

The 466^th Field Company assembled in a reserve position at Neuve Chapelle from 12 to 13 March 1915 and then spent April through September at Ploegsteert, Kemmel, Neuve Eglise and Hill 60. The company was at Bethune on 13 October during the attack at the Hohenzollern Redoubt and spent the period from November 1915 to January 1916 at The Quarries and Fosse 8, moving to Vimy Ridge in February. On 1 July 1916, the day of the start of the large British offensive on the Somme, Wootton and his company were at Gommecourt, taking part in the 46^th Division’s diversionary.

During the period from March to June 1917 the company made many moves in support of the division operations listed above. The company moved to Rettemoy Graben, Lens, Cite St. Edward, Cite St. Theodore, Cite Jeanne d’Arc, Cite de Riaumont, Bois de Lievin, Bois de Riaumont and Hill 65. The company took part in the Battle of Hill 70 from 15 to 25 August 1917.

The early months of 1918 were relatively quiet for the 466^th Field Company. When the Battle of St. Quentin Canal (29 September to 2 October) began the company was at Requeval Bridge. It then took part in the Battle of Beaurevoir from 3 to 5 October and the actions at Cambrai from 8 to 9 October, the Selle 17 to 25 October, and the Sambre 4 November. On 8 November 1918 the company was located at the Petite Helpe River.

Wootton’s Medal Index Card shows that he was “disembodied” on 24 February 1919. It appears that on this date he and other members of the company were returned to their Territorial Force status and were no longer in the Regular Army establishment.

Although the unit was not heavily engaged during the war it did suffer 18 losses from various causes as shown in the table below, listed alphabetically by date of death.[4]

Legend: KIA – Killed in Action; DOW – Died of Wounds; Died – of disease or accidentally killed.

(1) Sapper Phipps and Lance Corporal Heald still had their old Territorial Force Regimental Numbers when they died in France.

(2) Lance Corporal Isaac Taylor was killed on 13 October 1915 during the attack at the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

(3) Driver William Marklew was killed during the Battle of Hill 70 on 24 August 1917. He may have been killed accidentally.

(4) Sapper William Taylor died of wounds, perhaps received during the Battle of the Selle.

(5) Saddest of all, Company Quartermaster Sergeant Charles Boulton, 34 years old, died on the last day of the war. He may have been the first company victim of the Spanish Influenza.

For his service during the war Driver Harry Wootton was awarded the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal, as shown on his Medal Index Card. Examples of these medals are shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. The 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, and Victory Medal.
(Image from the author’s collection)

NOTE: These are not Wootton medals. The image above is presented to show what the medals look like. The whereabouts of Wootton’s medals are unknown to the author.

PRIESTLEY, R.E. Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46^th (North Midland) Division. T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., London, 1919.

Soldiers Died in the Great War. A Searchable Digital Database by The Naval and Military Press Ltd, Darlington, East Sussex, 1998.

The Royal Engineers Journal. Battle Honours of the Royal Engineers. The Institution of Royal Engineers, Chatham, Kent, 1925-1932.

[1] The rank of Private did not exist in the Royal Engineers. It was used on the MIC as his first rank in the Manchester Regiment and no rank is shown next to his subsequent postings to other units.

[2] Soldiers Died in the Great War.

[3] The Long, Long Trail.

[4] Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Soldiers Died in the Great War.

Name	Regimental Number	Rank	Cause of Death	Date of Death
Phipps, G⁽¹⁾	1294	Sapper	Died	16 Apr 1915
Taylor, Isaac	488639	L/Corporal	KIA	13 Oct 1915⁽²⁾
Heald, F.J.⁽¹⁾	197	L/Corporal	KIA	21 Oct 1916
Clarke, Harold Arthur	488214	Sapper	KIA	26 Apr 1917
Thompson, Patrick Stapler		Lieutenant	KIA	27 Apr 1917
Pickard, George	488062	Driver	KIA	8 May 1917
Price, Herbert	488123	Driver	DOW	8 May 1917
Forman, Arthur	183867	Sapper	DOW	3 Jul 1917
Marklew, William H.	488048	Driver	Died	24 Aug 1917 ⁽³⁾
Darlington, William	145640	Sapper	DOW	24 Nov 1917
Stringer, J.	488101	Sapper	KIA	23 Mar 1918
Goodehild, Ernest Harold	488179	Sapper	DOW	22 Apr 1918
Picken, C.	412762	Sapper	KIA	27 May 1918
Sawford, John Thomas	488143	Sapper	DOW	18 Jun 1918
Robinson, A.	426539	Sapper	KIA	20 Jun 1918
Houghton, Frederick Kendrick	488223	Sapper	KIA	6 Jul 1918
Taylor, William	471585	Sapper	DOW	29 Oct 1918 ⁽⁴⁾
Boulton, Charles	488673	CQMS	Died	11 Nov 1918 ⁽⁵⁾