The Great War: A–M · Story 32

The Major Family

The Parish Registers of Ringstead are littered with the Major surname. In looking for the young men who fought in the First World War, we can trace their descent from two sons of John and Mary (née Knowles) Major. Charles had been baptised on April 13th 1819, following the death of an earlier Charles, and his line leads through Lot Major and Susannah Ball to Charlie and Charles Arthur. Another son of John and Mary was baptised Morris on September 14th 1843 and his line leads through James and Mary Ann (née Medlow) to James Henry Major.

Charles Major (1896-1982)

Lot and Susan Major had ten children, six of whom survived into adulthood. Lot had married Susan Ball on 25th December 1878. Their family started with early tragedies when daughter Eliza May was buried, aged 13 months, on the 20th February 1880 and another Eliza was also buried on March 29th 1883, aged just six weeks. Polly who was born between the two Elizas did survive although, certainly in later life, she was disabled. Then followed Harry, John, Ernest, Charlie and Charles Arthur.

As we can see, rather strangely, the couple named one son, born on 12th March 1896, Charles, but always known as Charlie. Another son, born the following year, was named Charles Arthur, although sometimes known as Arthur. The family had moved to Raunds for a few years and the two “Charles” sons were born there. By 1901 they had returned to Ringstead and were living in 15 Carlow. By 1911 Lot was 59 and Susan 53. They were now living in Rosebery Street in the new Tilcroft Estate.

Lot had always been a handsewn army bootmaker but in 1911 he was “out of employment”. The oldest daughter, Polly, now 30 years old, was a boot closer but she too was out of work. Harry (28) was a laster in a local factory, Ernest (18) was a heel builder, Charlie (16) a shoe hand in the Lasting Department and Charles Arthur (14) was a “heel feeder for a heeling machine”. The only child who was not in the boot and shoe trade was John Thomas (22) who was a horsekeeper. Living with them were also grandchildren Willie and Florence Major.

As we have seen before in these biographies, the terrible irony for the handsewn men working on military boots and shoes, was that they needed wars to bring in the orders but they also knew that those same wars might take away their sons. None would have predicted the scale of losses that were suffered by the community and the nation.

Few of Charlie’s military records have survived but his Medal Card shows that he was in The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) with Regimental Number 25818 and the Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment) with number 79303. The Ringstead Roll of Honour has him in the 16th Battalion of the Buffs and demobilised but I think that this is a mistake. The Absent Voters’ List for 1918 has him in the 3rd Buffs but this may refer to the old name for the Buffs which was the 3rd Regiment of Foot. The Medal Roll, however, has him in the 10th Battalion of the Buffs (East Kent Regiment), transferring to the Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment) and we will assume that this the correct record of his service.

Charlie’s Regimental Number, 25818, indicates that he probably enlisted with the 10th in late May 1918. The 10th Battalion of the Buffs had been formed from the Royal East Kent and West Kent Yeomanry in Egypt on 1st February 1917. They had been sent to France and landed in Marseilles on the 7th May 1918 on board the HMT Malwa. They moved to the Western Front and took part in the Second Battle of the Somme, the Battles of the Hindenburg Line and the Final Advance into Artois and Flanders, ending the war in Tournai in Belgium.

They were now under the command of the 74th (Yeomanry) Division and the 23rd Infantry Brigade. At first it remained at GHQ Reserve as it built up numbers and the soldiers were trained and re-equipped for trench warfare. We cannot be sure but is likely that Charlie joined the Regiment in the field in the July to September 1918 period.

On 11th July the 10th moved into Front Line billets at La Miquellerie but it was not until 4th August that they took over positions in the right section of the Front line near St Floris. Their first real action was on 5th August when they were part of a concerted attack by the Allies along a wide front. In some areas there was little opposition and good progress was made but the 10th, apart from B Company, met determined opposition.

The story of the next two months was one of almost continual forward movement as the Germans retreated, destroying bridges and anything they thought might be useful to the Allies as they went. But it must not be thought that this was an easy process and many lives were lost. If we look at an advance on 21st September by the 10th we can see the dangers that Charlie and his fellow soldiers had to face. Chris (Drew-1918) writing on the Great War Forum in 2013 recounted the events of that day.

The advance was made behind a barrage which was successful enough to get them among the thick belts of wire near Zoo Trench. The infantry had to wait here while the barrage went on. A few men got through the wire and then the enemy came out of his dugouts and commenced a huge fire of shells and machine gun bullets. C and D Companies in front could do nothing but try to hold on in shell holes. A Company was just as badly off as they could not move forward and had to fall back from an enemy counterattack. C and D were now in danger from the rear. The telephone was disconnected and though two runners got back, nobody could return a message. When darkness fell the Buffs managed to get back having lost Captain Hatfield MC, 2nd Lt Oxley and 12 men killed, 2 officers and 28 Other Ranks “wounded or missing”. Also 20 more missing.

After this action the 10th Buffs were relieved by the 15th Suffolks and remained in reserve under intermittent shell fire until the 25th.

At first the progress was quite slow, often moving in and out of enemy trenches, and the Germans often launched counterattacks, using gas shells. Also the Royal Engineers were kept busy trying to construct temporary bridges across the rivers. The tide had turned but ground was still hard-won. At the end of September the Battalion was taken out of the Front Line and entrained to Lillers and from there to billets in Aubigny

October saw the enemy retreating at a faster rate as the resolve of the, often very young, troops began to break. In Historical Records of the Buffs, Colonel R.S.H. Rooney wrote:

The country had been for four years in the possession of the Germans and it is impossible to describe the joy manifested by the French inhabitants at their release at last from their horrible servitude. The Buffs never experienced, nor are they likely to again, such exuberant tokens of welcome and gratitude as they met in the neighbourhood of Lille.

The Buffs reached Marquin (or Marquain), three miles west of Tournai, and the gas and high explosive shelling by the Germans became very severe as they made a last stand. The 10th were at Tournai when the Armistice was finally declared on 11th November 1918.

At some point after the end of the war, Charlie, with many soldiers from the 10th (and 7th) Buffs, were transferred to the Queens (Royal West Surrey Regiment). Chris (clk) on the Great War Forum, whose research has greatly helped in establishing Charlie’s war service dates, has shown that he almost certainly would have been transferred to the Queens in February or early March 1919.

Another post by ken48 on the Great War Forum confirmed this by quoting from the 1st Queens War Diary which had noted on March 8th 1919 that two officers and 110 Other Ranks had joined from the 10th East Kents on instructions from GHQ. The Queens had been tasked with setting up and administering No.2 Reception Camp (Demobilisation) at Harfleur. It seems certain that Charlie was transferred to the Queens as part of a structured demobilisation process. This would explain why he was included in the Ringstead Register of Electors for Spring 1919.

Charlie returned to Ringstead and in 1920 was living with his parents, Lot and Susan, and older brother Harry in Rosebery Street. They were still all there in 1925 but the following year Charlie married Florrie Dainty. Florrie was the sister of Walter and Charles Dainty, Great War soldiers, whose stories we have already told. She had been born in Sheffield but her father was a Northamptonshire man and the family were living back in Ringstead. Her mother had died in 1920 and she probably had had to look after her father. She was 29 when she married Charlie Major who was just nine months her senior.

Before the war Charlie had been in the boot and shoe industry but by 1939 he was working as a horseman on a farm and Florrie was heel-cutting in a local factory. Living with them was Polly Major, Charlie’s disabled sister and a niece, Florence who was also a heel-cutter.

Florrie died on 11th May 1981 and, just under a year later, Charlie died, aged 86 on 4th April 1982. They had still been living at 12 Rosebery Street.

Charles Arthur Major (1897-1917)

As we have seen in the story of his older brother, Charles Arthur was the second Charles in quick succession for Lot and Susan Major. Both had been born in Raund,s in a short stay up the road from Ringstead, before the family returned to its home village. Aged fourteen, he had been a “heel-feeder” for a heeling machine in a local factory in the 1911 Ringstead Census. It seems, as we shall see, that he joined up before his older brother and enlisted in the 6th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment with Regimental Number 30917.

Few military records now exist for Charles but we know from the Ringstead Roll of Honour that he was in the 6th Battalion of the Northamptonshire and from his Medal Card that he had not been entitled to the 1914 or 1914/15 Star so had not seen service abroad until 1916 at the earliest.

Following links for two soldiers suggested by “Acknown” on the Great War Forum we find that a William Andrews of Raunds had Regimental Number 30913, just four digits before Charles, and he attested on 12th December 1915, was put on the Army Reserve and was mobilized on 17th November 1916. He was posted to the 3rd Northamptonshires two days later. He was not posted to France until the following year and was ferried from Folkestone to Boulogne on 9th February 1917. He joined the 6th Battalion on that day but did not join them “In the Field” until the 5th March 1917. Another soldier, Charles Templar had Regimental Number 30922 and was sent to the 1st Battalion of the Northamptonshires on 3rd March 1917.

We can, cautiously, deduce that William Andrews is the “best fit” and it seems likely that Charles too, sailed from Folkestone to Boulogne on 9th February 1917 and then, probably by rail, was taken to the 17th Infantry Base Camp at Étaples. These Camps received men from England and “toughened them up” ready to be posted to the Front Line. As a result Étaples was seen as having a harsh regime. The poet, Wilfred Owen, described the camp as a “bull ring” because of the brutality of some of the instructors. This caused unrest, particularly among the New Zealand troops and eventually led to a mutiny in September 1917.

It seems likely that Charles, like William Andrews, joined the 6th Battalion at the Front in the Arras area some time shortly after the 5th March 1917. In terrible conditions, the 6th had just taken part in a, finally inconclusive, attack, around a notorious area known as the Boom Ravine. At the beginning of March they had moved into dugouts and tents in Thiepval Wood. The War Diary for the 6th records that, on the 8th March, drafts of 50 and 92 men had joined them, helping to bring the Battalion back up to strength. This must have been when Charles Major and William Andrews arrived.

On the 12th March the 6th moved back up to the Achiet to Loupart Front Line although it was the following day that they moved into the trenches. What was happening, although the Allies did not at first realise it, was a planned withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, a heavily fortified line from Arras to the Aisne. This had been decided at the end of 1916 when the Germaans realised that they did not have the manpower or resources to defend the long front line that they were struggling to hold. This withdrawal took some five weeks from 21st February. They destroyed everything behind them, damaging wells and watercourses as well as buildings and railways. Nevertheless they also fought a fierce rearguard action in places, the Allied scouts then discovering that the enemy trenches had been vacated.

The 6th were fighting alongside the 12th Middlesex and the 7th Bedfordshires and as they pushed forward they were sometimes accompanied by a Squadron of cavalry and a one of cyclists. On the 21st March 1917 they left the Front Line and carried out a series of marches, linking bus and train journeys from Miraumont, via Warley (Warloy Baillon), Villers Bocage (north of Amiens), Dury, Bacouel (sur Selle), south of Amiens, and then north to Berguette and on to billets in Thiennes by the end of the month. This was a journey of about 100 miles going first south-west and then north.

On 1st April 1917 the War Diary noted that:

The blankets of 2 Company and transport men were sterilized during the day.

For the following fortnight the 6th were in camp undergoing general training together with various gun and bomb practices. The weather, however, was still very wet and sometimes the instruction took the form of lectures in the billets, which probably did not generate much enthusiasm, even if the men were glad to be out of the rain. On 21st April the Battalion moved to Manqueville and continued with the routine of training, and the occasional bath.

On 27th April the Battalion marched to entrain at Pernes for Arras. It was a long arduous journey made worse by an accident on the railway at Pernes which necessitated another march to the next station at Bryas with further delays along the way. They had originally arrived at Pernes station at 9.20 am and finally had to march to bivouacs at Neuville Vitasse, arriving there at 1.45 the following morning. This was a total journey of some 50 or 60 miles

On 29th April, A and D Companies were in the Front Line with C and B Companies in support. The War Diary reports:

A little shelling by the enemy of our trenches during the day. Lt. F.D.S. Walker and 4 Other Ranks wounded (1 remained on duty). Weather fine.

Yet it was on that day that Charles Arthur Major was reported to have been killed. The War Diary continues telling of the shelling and the digging of trenches. But the war for Charles was over. The Northampton Mercury of Friday 8th June, some five weeks later, had in the “Killed” column:

Major 30917, Private C.A. Northants. Ringstead.

I have found no further reference to him in the newspapers. He was twenty years old and is remembered on the Arras Memorial at Faubourg-d’Amiens Cemetery Bay 7. He does not have a grave. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website records:

At the entrance to the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery in France stands the Arras Memorial. The memorial commemorates nearly 35,000 soldiers of the British, South African and New Zealand forces with no known grave. Most of those commemorated were killed in the Battle of Arras, fought between 9 April and 16 May 1917.

James Henry Major (1884-1951)

As we have seen in the brief introduction to the Major family, James Henry had descended from Morrice another son of John and Mary. According to his entry in the 1939 Register of England & Wales he had been born on 5th September 1883 but most records suggest that it was a year later.

His father, also James, had married Frances Medlow from Spaldwick in 1872 and in 1881 they were living in Butchers Lane in Ringstead with children Mary Ann (7), Louisa (6), Martha (4) and Elizabeth (2). By 1891 they had moved to London Road (now Denford Road) and there were four further children: Samuel (8), James Henry (6), Frances (4) and Priscilla (2). James is shown as an Ironstone Labourer now and still married but there is no wife shown. Frances had died the previous year and one suspects that eldest daughter, Mary Ann, would have acted as his housekeeper. James married again, at the end of 1899, to local woman Emma Jane Abbott who was a middle-aged spinster. In the 1901 Census James and Emma were living in Carlow Road but only Samuel (18), [James] Henry (16), and Emily [Priscilla?] were still at home.

Emma Jane Major died too in 1909 but by then James Henry, her stepson, had already left home. He had married, on 17th August 1907 in Thrapston, to Mary Ann Sawford, who was also from a Ringstead family. Her older brother, John William, had volunteered as part of the St John Ambulance to serve in the Boer War. Unfortunately, like many others, he had died of Enteric Fever not long after arriving in South Africa.

In the 1911 Census the couple were living in Carlow Street with children Maurice James (3) and Eileen Mary (2). James was an “Army Boot Sewer” working in a local factory. Another daughter, Frances Joan, was born on the eve of the Great War.

We know that James was enlisted in the army on 24th June 1916 but was placed on reserve as part of the 26th Training Reserve Battalion. In November a tragedy hit the family unconnected with the war. The Northampton Mercury of Friday 1st December 1916 reported:

A RINGSTEAD TRAGEDY

An eight-year-old lad named Maurice Major, son of Mr Henry Major, Carlow Street, Ringstead, met with his death in a shocking manner on Monday morning. A motor petroleum wagon was going slowly along the street when the little boy tried to get on the side step. He slipped and the wheels of the motor went over him, killing him instantly.

We know that James, or Henry as we can see he was usually known, quite naturally, tried to keep from being posted abroad. To be more exact, his employer, Walter Lawrence had applied on his behalf. The records of the Military Tribunal show that James worked at the Walter Lawrence factory as a heel scourer. The workers in the military boot industry had initially been granted exemption from call-up as boots were vital to the war effort. As the war dragged on, however, the need for men outweighed this other need and the tribunals set up to hear these cases increasingly dismissed appeals against conscription. On the 15th June 1917, this is what happened to James Henry Major.

We get some idea of James’s appearance from his enlistment form. He was 5ft 7¾ inches tall with a 37½ inch chest when fully expanded. He was only categorised as B1 by the medical officer. What this meant varied throughout the war but probably excluded him from General Service in the Front Line.

After his appeal failed he was called up to the Depot in Northampton, then posted to the 26th Territorial Reserve Battalion and given the Regimental Number TR9/77355. On 6th December 1917 he was transferred to the 3rd Battalion of the Buffs (East Kent Regiment) at Canterbury with new number 535513. The 3rd Battalion remained in England throughout the war, at first based at Canterbury, later moving to Dover. Like many others, his records have faded badly and are mainly illegible so these “facts” must be treated as probabilities.

Near, or after, the end of, the war James was released from the Buffs and was posted first to 438 Agricultural Company which was based at Northampton. It then appears that he was posted again, this time to Western Command of the Labour Corps based at Sutton. The Ringstead Roll of Honour records that he was assisting at a Remount Depot. The Army Service Corps Remounts Service was set up to find and train horses and mules for service abroad. Animals were obtained from the United Kingdom by compulsory purchase (as illustrated in “War Horse” by Michael Morpurgo) but were also bought from all over the world.

By the time that James joined the service it was mainly about bringing fit horses home and the depots were beginning to close down.

James was diagnosed as suffering with heart trouble “aggravated” by his war service. He was “disembodied” (term for “discharged” for a territorial soldier) on 22nd November 1919 with a 20% Disability Pension, to be reviewed after a year. This gave him eight shilling for himself plus four shillings and eightpence for his wife and two children, giving him twelve shillings and eightpence a week. He was thirty-six years old. He returned to his family in Ringstead and in the 1920 England & Wales Electoral Register both James and his wife, Mary Ann, are listed. By the Representation of the People Act of 1918 women over 30 years old received the vote, but only if they were registered property occupiers (or married to a registered property occupier) of land or premises with a rateable value greater than £5 or of a dwelling-house. As a man, James only had to be 21, with no other qualification although before this Act he too would have had to have had a property qualification so it is possible that they both gained the vote in 1918.

Life returned to normal. Their girls joined the “Merry Comrades” and wrote letters to Auntie Dick at the Northampton Mercury telling of their pet bantams, chickens and rabbits. The Sawfords and the Majors were Nonconformists and involved in village and political life. In August 1926 the Labour Fete was held at Ringstead and both [James] Henry and Mary Ann were there as part of the organisation. The main speaker was Miss Ishbel MacDonald, daughter of Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister. She spoke of it being “more especially a women’s day”. She continued:

The men had not made the world a fit world for the children; and the women were coming in to work with the men to secure that end. They wanted to work for peace. They did not want another war. They wanted the children to grow up to live for their country, and not to die for their country; to work for their country and not to fight for their country. [Applause].

Many of the families there had reason to wish for that. There would be another war at the end of the next decade but it would be a very different one from the last.

We do not know if James returned to the shoe industry but by 1939 he had become a “fettler” in an Iron Foundry. He would have cleaned the sand and any loose iron from a casting with a file, wire brush or abrasive wheel. Mary Ann had for an occupation, the standard “Unpaid Domestic Duties”. Their two daughters Frances and Ellen had married and left home, Ellen just before the 1939 Register was compiled.

James died in 1951 aged 66 and Mary Ann in 1965.