Behind the name on the Croquet Cup

Sir (Ernest) Leslie Gossage in October 1941
© National Portrait Gallery, London   

Artist: Bassano Ltd

Air Marshal Sir Ernest Leslie Gossage KCB, CVO, DSO, MC, was one of the most highly decorated RAF officers to have fought in the Great War. He was not a Budleigh resident, but his family name is so well known in the town that his wartime service deserves a mention.

The Gossage family originated from Widnes in Cheshire, where William Gossage (1799-1877) opened his soap factory in 1850. His son Frederick Herbert (1833-1907) carried on the business successfully, living at a house named Winwood in Much Woolton,  an affluent suburb of Liverpool.

The name of Winwood recurs several times in the Gossage family records. It was borne by two of his sons, including William Winwood Gossage (1862-1934). Mayor of Widnes in 1901-02,  he was described as a soap manufacturer, as was his younger brother Ernest Frederick Gossage (1863-1933).

Ernest Frederick Gossage moved to Budleigh Salterton at some stage, living at a house called Homeland in 1919 according to a local town directory. However he either moved to another house or, more likely, renamed it in accordance with the family tradition. It was at Winwood, on Cricketfield Lane, that he died on 25 February 1933.

Their son Ernest Leslie Gossage (1891-1949) was born at Toxteth Park, Liverpool, on 3 February 1891.  He was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

On 19 July, 1912,  he was appointed as Second Lieutenant of the Royal Field Artillery, having joined the RFA Reserve while still at University.  On 12 May, 1915, he was listed as a Flying Officer with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), the air arm of the British Army. The term was originally used in RFC as a flying appointment for junior officers, not a rank.

At the start of the war, the role of the RFC consisted of artillery co-operation and photographic reconnaissance.  Commanded by Brigadier-General Sir David Henderson, it consisted of five squadrons – one observation balloon squadron (RFC No 1 Squadron) and four aeroplane squadrons. These were first used for aerial spotting on 13 September 1914, but only became efficient when they perfected the use of wireless communication at Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915. Aerial photography was attempted during 1914, but again only became effective the next year. By 1918, photographic images could be taken from 15,000 feet, and interpreted by over 3,000 personnel.

Gossage was assigned to No. 6 Squadron as a pilot. Formed at Farnborough on 31 January 1914, the squadron had arrived in France in August of that year.

By 5 September 1915 Gossage had reached the rank of Captain and had become a Flight Commander in No. 6 Squadron.

Following a promotion to Major in 1916, he was given command of No. 56 Squadron, described as “one of the most famous fighter squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps and early RAF.”

Later in the same year he took command of No. 8 Squadron. Operating from airfields near Saint-Omer, the squadron was initially used for bombing and long-range reconnaissance, carrying out flights of up to 100 miles (160 km) behind the front lines. It was equipped with a mixture of aircraft, including the Royal Aircraft Factory BE8 and the Bristol Scout, while it also evaluated the prototype Royal Aircraft Factory BE9, pictured above, a modified BE2 that carried the observer/gunner in a nacelle ahead of the aircraft's propeller.

The opinion of those testing the BE9 was generally negative, with Major Hugh Dowding, at the time commander of 16 Squadron, stating that it was "...an extremely dangerous machine from the passenger's point of view”,  while Hugh, later Viscount, Trenchard, head of the RFC in France said that "this type of machine cannot be recommended.” It was sent back to the United Kingdom early in 1916.

In February 1916 No. 8 Squadron moved to Bellevue and specialised in the Corps Reconnaissance role, carrying out contact patrols and artillery spotting in close co-operation with the army. The squadron flew in support of the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916 and the Battle of Arras in April–May 1917. 

In 1916, Gossage was awarded the Military Cross for his service with the RFC. The citation, dated 30 March, referred to his  “consistent good and zealous work under bad weather conditions, both on patrol and when co-operating with the artillery in operations resulting in the capture of the enemy's position.” 

The following year, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and took command of the Royal Flying Corps' 1st Wing.  When the Royal Air Force was founded on 1 April 1918 Gossage was appointed as a Staff officer in the Directorate of Operations and Intelligence.

After the War he became Officer Commanding the School of Army Co-operation before moving on to be Deputy Director of Staff Duties at the Air Ministry in 1928.  He was appointed Air Attaché in Berlin in 1930, Senior Air Staff Officer at Headquarters Air Defence of Great Britain and Senior Air Staff Officer at Headquarters RAF Iraq Command in 1934. He went on to be Air Officer Commanding British Forces Aden in 1935 and Air Officer Commanding No. 11 Group in 1936.

Air Marshal Gossage, fourth from left, as Air Member for Personnel, in session with the Air Council during World War II

He served in World War II as Inspector-General of the RAF, as Air Member for Personnel and then as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief at RAF Balloon Command.

 Following his retirement from regular service with the Royal Air Force, Gossage agreed to be re-employed to assume the role of Commandant Air Cadets after the retirement of Air Commodore John Adrian Chamier. He served in this role until he stepped down in 1946.  He died three years later in Sussex, aged 58.

Although the family background was commercial rather than military, there were links to the armed forces.  William Winwood Gossage is recorded as the Honorary Colonel of the 3^rd West Lancashire Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery.

A record of Cambridge University alumni edited by John Venn notes that his brother Ernest Frederick Gossage was described as ‘Lieut.Col.’ in his Times obituary of 27 February 1833 [sic] and in Who’s Who.  The Budleigh Salterton Members Challenge Cup Gossage Cup, which he presented to Budleigh Salterton Croquet Club in 1925, eight years before his death, also attributes this rank to him.   Venn observes that he was not recorded as such in Army Lists. However researcher Richard Daglish has been investigating the Gossage family as part of his study of a local Territorial artillery unit in which several family members served with distinction. Thanks are due to him for pointing out that Ernest Frederick Gossage appears in the London Gazette twice with that rank, one of them as Major, Hon. Lt.Col. (Email 30 October 2018.)

Records of the Budleigh Salterton Croquet Club in the 1970 issue control sheet make mention of a Major Gossage in 1947 with reference to the Gossage Cup. This is likely to have been Major Terence Leslie Gossage MBE (1918-1999), son of the Air Marshal and a Major in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.


‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!! 

A Budleigh widow’s son, killed in the Battle of Loos: Private Archibald George Slee, 14 October 1915

The badge of the Civil Service Rifles 

On the Loos Memorial in Dud Corner Cemetery, one kilometre west of the village of Loos-en-Gohelle is the name of yet another casualty of the Battle of Loos with a connection to Budleigh Salterton.

However Private Archibald George Slee was born not in Budleigh but in Ottery St Mary in 1895.  In 1901 he was living with his parents and older brother Harold Tom Slee in Silver Street, Ottery St Mary. Ten years later, according to the www.devonremembers.co.uk site, he was a student in London. At the outbreak of war he seems to have been working as a civil servant since he enlisted at Somerset House, headquarters of the 1^st/15^th London Regiment, known as the Civil Service Rifles because its recruits were made up of civil servants living and working in London.

After training at Bedmond and then Watford in Hertfordshire, Private Slee embarked at Southampton in one of four boats, used in peacetime, according to the Regimental History, for pleasure trips along the coast. Along with 30 officers, 1,045 other ranks, and 78 horses, he arrived at Le Havre on the morning of 18 March 1915.

It seems from the account in the Regimental History that the troops were not impressed, “the chief disappointment, perhaps, being that there were little or no signs of the Great War. No welcoming crowds of pretty French girls were there to meet them, and almost unnoticed they marched through the town and up the hill which led to the camp above Harfleur. Here the troops, perspiring after the steep climb, in what they thought was full marching order, learnt that there were many more things for the unfortunate Infantry soldier to carry in France. Winter clothing was issued, and although it was very welcome on that bitterly cold afternoon, the weight of it made everyone look forward with more than usual keenness to the coming of Spring.”

The Regiment had its full taste of warfare in the Battle of Festubert (15-25 May) and the Battle of Loos (25 September-14 October).

This image from the Illustrated London News of 30 October 1915 graphically conveys the horror of war, spelt out in the commentary: “One of the most awe-inspiring charges during the war was that made by the London Territorials on the German trenches between the ‘Tower Bridge’ of Loos and the great double slag-heap opposite Grenay, known as the Double Crassier. The first line having been cleared, a number of fortified houses were rushed, and finally Loos Cemetery was taken. Under cover of gas, the Territorials wearing their respirators, dashed forward with irresistible elan, and eventually emerged onto the front German line. The eerie effect produced by their Inquisition-like hoods struck terror into the hearts of the enemy. Sweeping with comparative ease over the German first-line trench, they encountered greater resistance at the sunken road and at the Lens Road junction at Valley Cross-roads, but this, too, was overcome, the enemy retiring to his third line of defence through Loos. The masked figure on the right is wearing the regulation belt filled with bombs. On the left three German machine-gunners are surrendering.”

The Loos Memorial

Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission 

It was during the last stages of the Battle of Loos that Private Slee was killed in action. He was 20 years old. His name appears on Sidmouth’s war memorial. By 1921, when the Commonwealth Graves Commission Certificate was issued, his mother Rosa Slee was a widow, living at 13 Greenway Lane, Budleigh Salterton.  

‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!

  

 

The blacksmith’s son from Newton Poppleford: Alfred Thomas Pring, 8 October 1915

British infantry advancing at the Battle of Loos 25 September 1915.  It was the first time that the British used poison gas. In places, the gas was blown back onto British trenches. Due to the inefficiency of contemporary gas masks, many soldiers removed them as they could not see through the fogged-up eyepieces or could barely breathe with them on, which led to some soldiers being affected by the gas as it blew back.

Thousands of wounded men from both sides would die following the bloody battle of Loos on 25 September. 

Private Alfred Thomas Pring was one of the many casualties. Aged only 17, he was one of five children born to William and Emily Pring, of Station Road in Newton Poppleford.  His father, one of the village blacksmiths, had died in 1907, leaving his mother Emily (nee Selleck) to run the smithy business. 

In the 1911 Census she is shown as living with her three children and being the owner of a blacksmith’s business employing 52- year-old Samuel Holmes as a “blacksmith’s servant” and with her eldest son (also called William) as a “student blacksmith” at the age of 14.

Like so many of his schoolboy friends, Alfred joined the Devonshire Regiment, 8th Battalion, in Exeter. On 8 October 1915, less than a year after enlisting, he died of his wounds, having been carried from the battlefield in Flanders.

Newton Poppleford war memorial outside St Luke’s Church

Alfred Pring is buried in France, in Boulogne’s Eastern Cemetery, and is remembered on the war memorial in Newton Poppleford.   

His story is told by Newton Poppleford resident John Hagger at http://www.roll-of honour.com/Devon/NewtonPoppleford.html

‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!

A black day for the 8th Battalion, 25 September 1915: Private Samuel Keen, Private Arthur Palmer, Private Charles Stuart, Private William Henry West

The Devonshire Regiment cap badge

Four men from the Lower Otter Valley lost their lives on 25 September at the Battle of Loos. This was a combined Anglo-French offensive intended to break through the German defences in Artois and Champagne in NW France and restore a war of movement. 

Above: 'Gassed', a very large oil painting completed in March 1919 by John Singer Sargent. It depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers walking towards a dressing station. Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to document the war and visited the Western Front in July 1918 spending time with the Guards Division near Arras, and then with the American Expeditionary Forces near Ypres. The painting was finished in March 1919 and voted picture of the year by the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919. It is now held by the Imperial War Museum 

Image credit: Imperial War Museum ART 1460

The action saw the first British use of poison gas, with disappointing results.  “It will be seen that the attack with gas was not the success that had been anticipated,” wrote the Special Correspondent of the Western Morning News of 5 April 1919. “It lacked the element of surprise as to the exact moment it was to be launched.  A favourable wind was an important feature in the days when gas clouds were the vogue.”

For the Devonshire Regiment there were some memorable achievements. Despite German shelling and British gas blowing back on them during the attack, the 8th Battalion pressed on with their attack and captured the German position. 

The 9th followed in support, losing a great many men to machine gun fire as they crossed No Man’s Land to join the 8th in their stretch of German trench.  The survivors of the two Battalions held the position until the evening of 26 September, when they were withdrawn. 

The two Battalions succeeded in capturing German field guns, two of which were brought back to Exeter to be paraded in the streets.

The Loos Memorial

Image credit: www.cwgc.org

But the ultimate result was a stalemate, with heavy losses on both sides. In this single battle the 8th Battalion suffered 639 casualties, and the 9th 476.

“We had a terrible time starting on the 25th September,” wrote Private Dennis in the Western Evening News of 13 November 1915.  “We lost over 600 men and all the officers that went with us.  I never felt more proud of Devonshire men than I do today.  When we were all lined up waiting for the word to charge (of course we were in the first line of trenches all night, it was 6.20 when we got the order to charge), not a man failed.  When we got over the parapet we were met with a terrible rifle and shell fire, gas, and barbed wire.  The enemy seemed to know what we were going to do.”  

All four men from the Lower Otter Valley are commemorated on the Loos Memorial, near the village of  Loos-en-Gohelle, five kilometres north-west of Lens. The Memorial forms the sides and back of Dud Corner Cemetery.

Samuel Keen was born in Cheriton Fitzpaine in Mid Devon in 1879. He was the son of dairy farmer Samuel senior and Charlotte Keen, who had seven children.The 1891 census shows the family living at Brook Farm, Tiverton, but young Samuel later became a waggoner and a resident of East Budleigh, although his name does not appear on any memorials in the village. He was 35 years old when he was killed.

The War Memorial in All Saints Church, East Budleigh 

Private Arthur Palmer was an East Budleigh man, born around 1874. He was the son of Alfred and Mary Jane Palmer and had a brother, William, who would die two years later, on 23 August 1917.  Arthur Palmer left a widow, Jeanette, but has no known grave. However his name appears on war memorials in Exmouth and in Seaton as well as on the All Saints Church memorial in East Budleigh.  

Private Charles Stuart’s name also appears on All Saints Church memorial, tragically next to those of his two brothers Arthur and Albert, who were killed  in 1916 and 1917 respectively.  All three were the sons of William Henry and Elizabeth Ann Stuart, of Brookside Cottage. Charles was aged only 20 when he died.

Twenty-two-year-old Private William West was the fourth man from the 8^th Batallion to be killed in action on 25 September 1915. The 22-year-old  was the sixth of 13 children born to John and Amelia West and grew up in East Budleigh.  His mother’s maiden name was Sanders.  

Perriam's grocery store was at 23 Fore Street

By 1911 the family had moved to Budleigh Salterton; when William died they were living at 12, Cliff Road. His father John was a van man for Perriams, the town’s grocery store, where William worked as an assistant before he enlisted.

William Henry West’s name appears on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial and on the brass plaque in St Peter’s Church in Budleigh Salterton, as well as at the town’s football club, and on the Loos Memorial.

‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!

The first of two Newton Poppleford brothers to die: Acting Staff Serjeant Dan Smale, 19 September 1915

 

The name of Dan Smale, Acting Staff Serjeant with the Army Service Corps, 50th Field Butchery Division, appears on the Helles Memorial which stands on the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. An obelisk over 30 metres high, it can be seen by ships passing through the Dardanelles.

Dan Smale and his brother Charles, who would die ten months later, were the children of Thomas and Sarah Ann Smale.  Their father described himself as a cattle dealer but was also involved in the slaughter and butchering of the beasts, and in White’s Gazetteer of Devon he is described as a butcher. In 1891 apart from himself, he also employed his four oldest children in the business.

Army meat supplies: a portrait of February 1917 of the 57th or 58th Battalion butchery, made by the Darge Photographic Company    Image credit: Australian War Memorial 

Dan is recorded as a resident of both Budleigh Salterton and Newton Poppleford. He joined the Regular Army in 1897, enlisting in the Royal Army Service Corps at Aldershot. No doubt because of his family background  he was attached to the 50th Field Butchery Division.  Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914 he was posted to Egypt where his work involved the provision of meat supplies.  

It is possible, thinks Newton Poppleford local historian John Hagger, that Dan’s death may have been due to his poor working conditions. “The conditions of slaughter houses in a country with very high temperatures and water available only for drinking, is not difficult to imagine.”

Disease was a significant killer during the Gallipoli campaign. Conditions on the peninsula deteriorated in the summer heat. Plagues of flies caused by the primitive sanitation led to outbreaks of typhoid, also known as enteric fever, and dysentery. Lice were a universal problem. Thousands of men were evacuated to hospital ships and back to base hospitals at Lemnos island, Egypt and Malta.

The SS Egypt was built in1897 by Caird & Co for P&O and served as a hospital ship during the Great War. In 1922 in fog in the English Channel she collided with the cargo vessel Seine and sank, killing 86 people. Her strong room contained more than £1 million in silver bullion and gold sovereigns. In the 1930s an Italian salvage company used explosives and a diver to open the strong room and recover most of the silver and gold.  Image credit: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland 

The P&O liner Egypt had been hired by the Admiralty as a Hospital Ship on 2 August 1915, and it was here that Dan succombed to dysentery like so many others during the Gallipoli campaign.     

Newton Poppleford's War Memorial, seen here and below, records the names of Dan and Charlie Smale

His wife, living at 9 Perriams Place off Chapel Street in Budleigh Salterton, wrote to the authorities on 28 October to ask for her husband’s possessions and these were returned to her along with his medals on 16 January 1916.  

Newton Poppleford War Memorial

Local resident John Hagger has done a tremendous job in presenting Newton Poppleford's casualties of the Great War at http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Devon/NewtonPoppleford.html

‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!