Hunting Geoffrey Moulson

 A nurse portrayed in Vera Brittain’s classic WW1 work Testament of Youth turns out to be the elder sister of a former RAMC officer painted by Budleigh artist Joyce Dennys. 

 

Local journalist Eleanor Pipe wrote recently about Budleigh artist Joyce Dennys. Illustrated with paintings ranging from wartime posters to amusing street scenes, her article was published in the Journal on 16 October 2014 and was read with much interest.

Fairlynch Museum has many of Joyce Dennys’ paintings on display. There are also folders cataloguing her works, both art and writings.

In the Fairlynch folder’s section on oil on board figurative paintings, no 21 is described as ‘Old man on bench with basket’.

 

This painting, identical in every detail to the photo in the Fairlynch catalogue, was recently sold on the open market. Described as ‘A portrait of Geoffrey Moulson, widower, resting with his basket of shopping at Lion House’,  it was bought by a private collector according to the article in the Journal.

A cursory search of The London Gazette via the internet showed that a Geoffrey Moulson was gazetted as Lieutenant with effect from 1 January 1917. A later announcement in a supplement to The London Gazette of 5 September identifies him as a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

I’m not really into all that serious family tree research but learning about the Great War has been an eye-opening experience. By now I was intrigued.  Joyce Dennys is noteworthy not only as the writer of Henrietta’s War but as the creator of the famous WW1 recruitment poster for VAD nurses.

A glance at the British Military Lists website showed me that Geoffrey Moulson was born on 17 February 1892, making him just a year older than the Budleigh artist and writer. 

Were they friends? Did he live in Budleigh? Had he come across Tom Evans, Joyce Dennys’ husband and the town’s GP, through their shared experience with the RAMC during World War One?

While searching the net, I found Geoffrey Moulson’s name mentioned on the useful RootsChat website by a researcher in Australia who wanted to know more about him. Geoffrey, it seems, had had a distinguished medical career, having been a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and was quoted by the Australian researcher as a Colonel in the RAMC.

He’d studied Medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital in London before war broke out. At an early stage of the conflict,  he had evidently volunteered, serving in France and Belgium from 2 November to 23 December 2014 and being awarded the 1914 Star medal.  One comment on RootsChat was that during this time he served as a dresser with the Number 6 Red Cross Hospital at Boulogne.

 

Doctors placing a patient's broken thigh in traction at a base hospital during World War One

Image credit: Imperial War Museum Q 33472

According to the Red Cross website, this hospital was actually at Etaples. There is conflicting information about the location of Number 6 Red Cross Hospital. It was a mobile unit funded by Liverpool Chamber of Commerce - it was known as the Liverpool Merchants' Mobile Hospital - and was not set up until April 1915, when it was based temporarily at Le Touquet-Paris-Plage on the French coast near Boulogne.

 

In whichever hospital in Northern France he was based at this time, Geoffrey Moulson would have found himself at the forefront of theories about the treatment of wounds in the early days of the Great War. In a 1996 article by Elinor Meynell published in the British Medical Journal the author drew attention to the role of  the celebrated bacteriologist Sir Almoth Wright, seen above,  and the need for pathological investigation of wound infection. Wright had set up a laboratory at the 13th General Hospital in Boulogne; his staff included Alexander Fleming, the future discoverer of penicillin.

But back to Geoffrey Moulson. His University of London OTC war record gave some useful information. However, following his stint at a hospital in Northern France in 1914 I found no information about his war service until he’s recorded as an officer in Mesopotamia from August 1916 until June 1917. What had happened during the two-year gap, I wondered. Had he been wounded?

At some stage he may have returned to Britain. His surname is listed on a photo dated 2 January 1918, showing the RAMC England football team - a real find via RootsChat. There was, it seems an RAMC international charity match between England and Scotland. The RAMC had a large facility during World War One at the Lancashire Military Convalescent Hospital, Blackpool, and the photo was taken by a Blackpool photographer.

That was followed by a spell in India, where he remained until December 1919.  But he seems to have remained with the RAMC, being listed as a Major on 15 July 1928.   

The Ancestry site lists a Geoffrey Moulson born in about 1892 in Kent and living in Hampshire. His mother was Lydia. Now I don’t subscribe to Ancestry. I believe in making information free of charge to my readers, though I suppose that the Ancestry site has to be maintained. But it does seem to charge rather a lot for membership.

However I’m grateful on this occasion to Ancestry because by chance I’d been reading about Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth and had come across the name of Faith Moulson. “I wonder...” I thought to myself.

Sure enough, according to Ancestry, Faith Moulson, born in about 1886, had a mother called Lydia and lived in Hampshire.

According to the National Archives,  Faith Moulson was a Reserve Sister with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service at the British Red Cross Society Hospital.  As Sister in charge of the ward for German prisoners in the hospital at Etaples, Northern France, she was one of the two nursing sisters with whom Vera Brittain worked. She would later be portrayed as Hope Milroy in Brittain’s classic WW1 work Testament of Youth.               

If Joyce Dennys completed her painting in the year of Geoffrey Moulson’s death it seems that it was a fitting tribute from an artist who, like Vera Brittain, had played her own role in the medical history of the Great War.

If anyone out there can help to fill in the gaps in Geoffrey Moulson’s life I’d love to hear from them.

‘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 honour: Second Lieutenant Francis Pepys, killed in action 12 November 1914

  

Second Lieutenant Francis Pepys DSO (1891-1914)  Photo  reproduced by kind permission of the Headmaster and Governors of Charterhouse  

 For the Pepys family in Knowle, still grieving over the loss of their eldest son John, as described here it must have been devastating to be told, barely three months later, that his brother Francis had been killed at Ypres.  

  

Maybe the family gained some consolation from the news that Francis had died a hero.  

Like his brother John, he was brought up in the family home of Knowle House on Dalditch Lane.

 

A Charterhouse group: Francis Pepys is seated, right. 

Photo reproduced by kind permission of the Headmaster and Governors of Charterhouse 

While still at school at Charterhouse, in Surrey, he had decided on a military career. In May 1913 he was gazetted as Second Lieutenant to the 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. He went to France with the Expeditionary Force on 13 August 1914, taking part in the retreat from Mons and in the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne the following month.  

Francis Pepys was the first serviceman from the Lower Otter Valley to be honoured with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The citation, dated 1 December 1914, reads as follows: "On 3rd November 1914, he did conspicuous good work in advancing from his trench and assisting in driving away a party of the enemy who were commencing to dig a new trench within 30 yards of his own; 30 of the enemy were shot down on the occasion.”   

 

‘The Defeat of the Prussian Guard, Ypres, 1914’ as depicted in 1916 by the English painter William Barnes Wollen (1857-1936).  The painting shows the 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in action against the Prussian Guard at the Battle of Nonne Bosschen, 11 November 1914.

Just over a week later he took part in the repulse of the Prussian Guards, an action of the Great War celebrated in paintings such as the above example. Sadly, he was killed in action on 12 November by a shell burst as he stepped out of his trench. 

Francis Pepys, who was unmarried, was evidently a promising young officer whose loss was keenly felt by his colleagues. Writing of the DSO which he had gained, his Commanding Officer described how he had “most thoroughly earned” the award for his determined action in repulsing the enemy “and for his splendid leading on other occasions."  The young man’s bravery was also mentioned in a Despatch of 14 January 1915 by Field Marshal Sir John French, later created 1st Earl of Ypres.

 

The Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery

©  Mo Sandford FRPS 2014
The author Michael Morpurgo has described Budleigh-based Mo Sandford's work as "deeply moving and interesting." More of her remarkable photos of World War I battlefields can be seen here

Francis Pepys has no known grave, although the Marquis de Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour records that he was buried at Zonnebeke, in Tyne Cot, the largest British and Commonwealth war cemetery in the world.   

 

 Image credit: Commonwealth Graves War Commission

 www.cwgc.org

He is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, seen above. 

A keen sportsman, he was noted for his love of steeplechasing: he won the Officers' Race in the Vim Hunt Point-to-Point in 1914. Golf, fishing, skiing and cricket were among his other passions; he is commemorated on the Lord's Cricket Members War Memorial, as well as in All Saints’ Church and on East Budleigh village war memorial.

 

 

All Saints Church memorial

Image credit: All Saints’ Parochial Church Council 
‘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 Race for the Sea:17 September - 22 November 1914

 

A cap badge of the Devonshire Regiment.  Private Frank Miller was the first member of the Regiment to be killed in action during the Great War

The retreat of British forces from Mons was followed by attempts of both sides to outflank each other, during what became known as the Race to the Sea. This part of the Western Front in Northern France was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the first year of the war. It included the battle of La Bassée, which lasted from 10 October to 2 November 1914; Private Frank Miller was killed on 21 October while serving with the 1st Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment.

 

The Le Touret Memorial

Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

http://www.cwgc.org

The son of James and Louisa Miller, of ‘Southcotts’ on Exmouth Road in Colaton Raleigh, the 27-year-old is remembered on the Le Touret Memorial, near the town of Bethune in Northern France. It commemorates over 13,400 British soldiers who were killed in this sector of the Western Front from the beginning of October 1914 to the eve of the Battle of Loos in late September 1915 and who have no known grave.   

The Le Touret Memorial, pictured above,  bears the name of a second Colaton Raleigh man, Private William Jesse Clapp, from the same battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, who was killed in action two days later.  

  

Both Frank Miller and Jesse Clapp are remembered on the memorial in Colaton Raleigh church. 

Pic:  Aubers Ridge British Cemetery

Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

http://www.cwgc.org

A third man from Colaton Raleigh whose name is listed on the church memorial is Private Herbert George Riggs, who died from his wounds at this early stage of the Great War. The 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment in which he was serving had been in Egypt when war broke out. On 6 November 1914 the battalion landed at Le Havre as part of the 23rd Brigade, 8th Division, and it was during one of its engagements in Northern France that Private Riggs was wounded. He died on 27 November, aged 28. He may well have been buried initially at the Winchester Post Military Cemetery in the village of Laventie before being moved in 1925 to the Aubers Ridge British Cemetery at Aubers in the Nord district of France.

 

 

Image credit: Lancing College

Also part of the Race to the Sea was the Battle of Armentières, which took place from 13 October to 2 November.  Second Lieutenant Lionel Holford Hughes, pictured above,  was killed by a stray shell on 29 October in the trenches near Rue du Bois, a small village two miles south of Armentières. He was the only son of Allen Edward Hughes and his wife Evelyn Emma. His father, an earthenware manufacturer, is recorded as residing at Wychdon Lodge, Weston, Staffordshire, but by 1914 they had moved to ‘Cintra’, on Coastguard Road in Budleigh Salterton.  

 

Lionel Hughes’ grave is in Ration Farm Military Cemetery, a short distance south of the village of La Chapelle-d'Armentieres, on the south-eastern outskirts of Armentieres.

Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission     http://www.cwgc.org

Aged only 19, Lionel Hughes  had recently left Lancing College in Sussex, where he excelled in many sports; for two years he represented the College in shooting at Bisley. While still at school he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment.  

The culmination of the Race to the Sea came between 19 October and 22 November with the First Battle of Ypres. The town in Western Belgium was the last major obstacle to the German advance on Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais; although the battle was an Allied victory losses were heavy on both sides as the British, French and Belgian forces held back the invaders. 

Yet another young officer with a link to our area was lost when Lieutenant Charles Vivian de Grete Edye was killed in action on 30 October at Ypres. From an old service family with many distinguished naval connections he was the 28-year-old son of Ernest and Kate Edye. His parents moved from Teddington, Middlesex, to East Devon in the post-war years and are listed as living at both West Hill Lodge - now replaced by flats as West Hill Court in Budleigh Salterton - and Syon House in East Budleigh.

Born in Twickenham, he was educated at Bradfield College in Berkshire. He was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in August 1905, and had served at various stations abroad, including South Africa and China. 

 

Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

http://www.cwgc.org

Vivian Edye’s name appears on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial seen above,  as well as on the All Saints’ church war memorial and Budleigh Salterton’s war 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!!