Moving tributes to the heroes of battle

The Battle of Boar’s Head was honoured yesterday with an engraved stone and slate sculpture featuring First World War poems, maps and illustrations designed by students at Chatsmore Catholic School in Worthing.

And last night a ceremony was held outside Worthing Town Hall to remember those who died.

Nearly 400 men from the Royal Sussex Regiment were killed in just a matter of hours at the Battle of Boar’s Head in Richebourg, France, on June 30, 1916.

Nearly every town and village across the county was affected in the diversionary tactic now known as the Day Sussex Died, a prelude to the Battle of the Somme.

Some 22 casualties came from Worthing and people gathered yesterday morning to formally unveil a sculpture at Beach House Park.

Students have spent the last few months working on an art project to remember the fallen and a small group of students won a bid to visit battlefields with serving soldiers to learn more about the conflict.

Year 5 pupils from St Mary’s, St Wilfrid’s, St Catherine’s and English Martyrs Catholic primary schools also contributed to the decorations.

Assistant headteacher Julian Morgan and teacher Caroline Woodward from Chatsmore Catholic School worked with Worthing Library, the borough council and arts organisations on the project.

The sculpture was donated by Caring Lady Funeral Directors.

Mr Morgan said: “We have been blown away by how the community has come together to work on this project.

"The students have worked extremely hard in a very short space of time. It has been an incredible response – we had nearly 100 people of all ages attend the memorial.”

More than 100 descendants of those who died travelled to Richebourg-l’Avoué, a small village north of Lens in France, yesterday to mark the anniversary and were joined by representatives from the Royal Sussex Regiment Association.

Last night a military service was held to mirror a service held in Worthing.

The drumhead ceremony outside Worthing Town Hall, in Chapel Road, was conducted by Reverend David Farrant, honorary chaplain of the Worthing Combined Ex-Services Association.

The crowd heard a message from the deputy mayor of Richebourg and pupils from St Andrew’s Church of England Boys School laid 22 crosses to mark the town’s dead followed by prayers and The Last Post, performed by 12-year-old Grace Heath, of Sompting.

The Lancing Brass Band of the Royal British Legion played throughout the ceremony.

A similar service took place at the Old Steine War Memorial in Brighton.

Church bells rang out across Sussex with a full peal at Chichester Cathedral from 1pm for three hours.

First World War re-enactors, boards telling stories of the casualties and artefacts were all part of events at Brighton Museum.

Historian Chris Kempshall gave a talk about the impact the day had on Sussex on Wednesday at The Keep in Brighton.

THESE WERE OUR BOYS, OUR SUSSEX LADS AND SO YOUNG

A COLD wind blew under grey skies yesterday as the names of the 23 men of Worthing who died a century ago were read out in front of the town hall.

Teenage pupils from St Andrew’s Church of England High school – some already older than boys who died in the mud and shrapnel of Richebourg on June 30, 1916 – bore crosses commemorating the names of the dead.

The sound of the hammer striking them into the ground on Chapel Road rang a sombre percussive accompaniment to the gruff voice of Major Tom Wye (ret’d) as he gave a glimpse into the lives cruelly snuffed out 100 years ago.

Ernest Collins was an ironmonger who lived in George Street in Worthing.  He was 20 when, as a member of the Royal Sussex Regiment, he lost his life in northern France in a battle which became known as the Day Sussex Died.

Harold Fletcher was just 16 when he answered Lord Kitchener’s call to arms in 1914.  He died aged 18 a century ago yesterday. His brother George was killed the next year, at Ypres.

Reginald Manwaring’s 18-year-old body was never recovered from the killing fields of the First World War.  A memorial to his memory on his family plot in Worthing reads: “If I should die think only this of me.

“There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.”

As the list went on and the wind blew and Major Wye found himself repeating “he has no known grave”, the crowd of about 60 grew still.

The stories of the lives and deaths of these Sussex lads could be told because of a four-year project, orchestrated in part by Major Wye, to research all 663 names on the town’s war memorial.

“The whole idea is to stop it being a column of names. It’s a column of people,” he said.

“It made me very proud.

“So many Worthing lads paid the price and as it turns out it was futile but they did their duty and I’m sure they’d do it again if they were asked to.”

Jim Still, president of the Brighton and Hove branch of the Canadian Volunteers said afterwards: “It was a very moving service. These were our boys, these were Sussex lads.

“They walked off into a war and look how young they were.”

The ceremony had started at 5pm with Reverend David Farrant, backed by civic leaders and facing flag-bearers from a dozen regiments, telling assembled onlookers that in the Battle of Richebourg on this day in 1916, 366 Sussex men and boys died in just four hours.

As the ceremony went on the crowd found its voice, soft and reserved but sincere, to commemorate their sacrifice by singing I Vow To Thee My Country, written by one-time Sussex resident William Blake.

And once songs were done and crosses laid, a single trumpeter from the Lancing Brass of the Royal British Legion Band picked out the notes of the Last Post as the former servicemen holding regimental flags lowered their colours.

Bob Scott, president of the combined ex-servicemen association which organised the event in conjunction with Worthing Borough Council, is a former Chief Petty Officer who spent 24 years in the Royal Navy.

He said: “I think you can put yourself in their shoes. I was 18 when I joined up and I’ve had experiences throughout the world. They heard the call and they went.

“And actually I think if you were to ask the youth of today, if something were to happen, you would find that they would step forward as well.”

At 15 years old, Oliver Wheatley of St Andrew’s High School is already a year older than Worthing lad John Searle – whose death was commemorated yesterday – was when he joined up in 1915.

Oliver carried a cross yesterday and said: “It was very moving.

“I think it displayed a lot of compassion of how we came together as a community and how brave these people were to give their lives for us.”

He said that discussions in school had led him and his friends to address the question of what they would do in the shoes of their predecessors.

“I genuinely wouldn’t know what to do.

“I wouldn’t be able to do that. So the courage they had and bravery they showed is unimaginable,” he said.

The crowd dispersed after a rendition of the incongruously cheery marching song of the Royal Sussex Regiment, which declared – as they do from the stands of the cricket ground in Hove – that “you may tell them all, that we stand or fall, for Sussex by the Sea.”

One hundred years ago yesterday, in a blood-stained field in France, they needed no telling.