235231 PRIVATE JOHN RUSSELL DAY
2ND BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY
KILLED IN ACTION
2ND DECEMBER 1917
AGE 30
John Day, although a Suffolk man, had not originally come from Halesworth or one of the surrounding villages. Born on the 7th July 1887, he was the fourth child of John, a milkman, and Ellen (née Hayes) of Stowmarket. On completing his education in 1901 he trained as a gentleman’s hairdresser. By the time of the 1911 census, he was found employed in his trade while lodging with Edward and Fanny Easter in their home at 25 Wissett Road, Halesworth. In the third quarter of 1913 he married a local dressmaker, Bessie Peck, who had lived with her parents at 3 Rectory Street. Just one year later their son, Gerald Arthur, was born.
Due to the lack of John’s service records, it is difficult to trace his exact military service. However, from what information there is available, it appears that he enlisted in the army at Lowestoft in October 1916, initially to serve as a Private Soldier in the Essex Regiment with the service number of 6625. This four-digit number may indicate that he was first mustered as a Territorial or possibly a New Army recruit. After training he had been sent to serve in the 2nd Battalion Essex Regiment which at the time had been a Regular Army battalion serving in France since August 1914. On being taken on the strength of his new battalion he was issued with the new soldier’s number of 400776. After crossing to France, it appears that John and a large draft of his comrades destined to join the 2nd Essex were held at in the 32nd Infantry Base Depot located at Etaples close to the French port of Boulogne. These depots, of which there were initially sixty-four in total, were holding centres situated close to the Channel ports where soldiers, having recently arrived or returning after being wounded, were given further training while waiting to be posted to their Division or Regiments at the front. Etaples is also to this day the largest of all the military cemeteries managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in France, with the graves of one hundred and fourteen thousand, eight hundred and sixty-six British Commonwealth servicemen buried there from both World Wars as well as the burial place of over six hundred German troops. The vast majority of these men would have died in one of the many military hospitals located in and around the town during the Great War.
The battalion war diaries of the 2nd Battalion Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry show that during the three months prior to John’s death in December 1917 they had received a total of one hundred and twenty casualty replacements from the 32nd Depot.
A search of the medal roll shows that seventy-two of these men had previously been allocated consecutive regimental numbers from the series of those issued to the 2nd Essex, with their new 2nd K.O.Y.L.I numbers also running consecutively. The first of these to become a fatal casualty while serving in their new regiment was a Private Ernest Smith who had died of wounds on the 1st October 1917. Just two months later John, with his battalion, were preparing themselves for a planned night-time attack on the German front line. This would later prove to be the largest night attack staged during the whole of the bloody Passchendaele campaign. During the previous few weeks, the weather had been horrendous with constant rain, that had turned ‘NO MANSLAND’ into a sea of mud, where any man falling from one of the duckboard walkways was in severe danger of a horrible death by drowning in a sodden quagmire. Sadly, after weeks of leaden skies, on the night of the attack the sky was clear, with a brilliant full moon. At exactly 1.55am the men from the 2nd K.O.Y.L.I. climbed from their trenches to cross the five hundred or so yards to the German positions. The plan for this attack differed from several of their recent actions in that the General Staff gave instructions, that rather than beginning with an artillery bombardment on the German front line, which had previously warned the enemy that an assault was imminent, they would attempt to get the infantry up to the barbed-wire obstacles in front of their line before unleashing a barrage of fire onto the German support lines, hopefully cutting off their ability to send forward reinforcements. Regrettably this tactic was doomed from the start due to the hard going of trying to cross the waterlogged and muddy ground. This, combined with the advancing troops being silhouetted by a bright moon and clear sky, it was later reported that the German sentries had first spotted and heard the troops’ movements shortly after the ‘Tommies’ had left their trenches. Within a matter of minutes their front line was fully manned and ready to pour heavy machine gun and rifle fire into the slowly advancing troops who by now were caked in a clinging mud, while each man was loaded down with a full load of ammunition and grenades as well as the tools needed to breach the German wire. On getting within two hundred yards of their objective the defending troops opened up a withering fire. Almost immediately chaos reigned as many of the battalion’s Officers and Senior Non-Commissioned Officers leading from the front became early casualties. In the confusion that followed not only did soldiers from the battalion’s different companies become disoriented but also their two flanking battalions (to their left the 2nd Rifle Brigade and the 16th Highland Light Infantry to their right) soon began to cross each other’s axis of advance as they tried to find dead ground in which they could then find a way through the wire.
In spite of the disastrous situation, one of the few remaining officers, with a small party of men, managed to find a way into the German line where they were confronted by a concrete pill box to which they were unable to gain entry. Shortly after, the withdrawal was called for. On making the safety of their own line as dawn was breaking on the 2nd December, the one remaining officer of the battalion still on his feet had great difficulty sorting out which men had returned from his Company, with such a mix of men, not only from the 2nd K.O.Y.L.I but from their neighbouring battalions, all in a state of collapse. When he finally called his company roll only twelve men out of just over one hundred who had formed up only six hours before answered their names. Although more men would re-join as the day progressed, the final total of men lost by the 2nd K.O.Y.L.I during the attack amounted to fifteen Officers killed, wounded or missing with the loss of one hundred and eighty-seven soldiers also lost under the same headings with forty-one of those posted as Missing In Action. It is possible that John could have been one of these as his identifiable remains were never found. He is remembered today on the Tyne Cot memorial to those who have no known grave.
In Halesworth, after John had been reported as Missing In Action, Bessie would initially have received the weekly allowance allocated on John’s behalf to her and their son Gerald, but after six months with no acknowledgement from the Red Cross of him being a prisoner in German hands, she then received a widow’s weekly pension of £1.1s.3d (£1.06p) with the element of that attributed to her son ceasing in 1930 on his sixteenth birthday. In August 1919 Bessie received the final amount of her gratuity, which amounted to £10.3s.2d (£10.16p).
She would also have received his medal awards of the British War and Victory pair with the named memorial plaque and scroll.
The location of these is unknown.
As well as today being remembered on the Halesworth War memorial he is also listed on the memorial of his home town, Stowmarket.
