40678 LANCE CORPORAL ROBERT HOWARD
1/1ST BATTALION CAMBRIDGESHIRE REGIMENT T.F.
KILLED IN ACTION
26TH AUGUST 1918
AGE 38 YEARS
Robert was the sixth child born to Robert Senior, a master carpenter, and his first wife Mary Anne (née Pearce). During the fourth quarter of 1879, at the time of his birth, the family were living in Chediston Street, Halesworth. After attending the local boy’s school, Robert trained as a butcher. On becoming qualified he would have been classified as a journeyman butcher. This enabled him to travel and be employed in his trade throughout the land. At the time of the 1901 census, he was employed and boarding with John Goddard, a pork butcher, in the Stoke district of Ipswich the county town of Suffolk. It was while there that he met Agnes Burch whom he married in 1905. Six years later the 1911 census lists them as living with two young daughters at 18 Pauline Street, Ipswich. On the outbreak of the Great War, now with a young family and in his mid-thirties, he was not one of those who rushed to enlist in the armed forces.
Nevertheless, after the introduction of conscription in early 1916, Robert was called to join the army in May, initially to serve as 40678 a Private Soldier in the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment who were at that time training new recruits while based at Gillingham in Kent.
After completing five months of instruction on how to be a frontline infantryman, in October 1916 he joined a draft being sent out to France to join the 7th (Service) Battalion, Suffolk Regiment. Little information regarding his service is available in the official records; however, in an article published in the Halesworth Times newspaper on 24th September 1918 it announced, on behalf of his parents, Robert’s death while in action, he is referred to as having fought in several engagements during which he had been wounded on three separate occasions. At least one of these would have been serious enough to warrant him being returned to England. His medal roll records that for a time he had served in the 1st (Garrison) Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, which had been formed in March 1916 to provide men for the defence of points along the banks of the rivers Thames and Medway among other vulnerable points, in the event of a possible German invasion. It is likely that Robert would have spent some time with this battalion while recovering from his wounds. After re-joining his comrades serving in the 7th Suffolks at some time in the early months of 1918, Robert now a Lance Corporal, would have served once more in the firing line, in what has since been described by the men who were there as being a time of pure terror mixed with living in mud and slime, while suffering many days of boredom, not helped in the winter months by being constantly wet through.
In May 1918, due to the large numbers of men lost throughout the army, it was decided to disband several infantry battalions, with their remaining men being posted to other regiments as a boost to their numbers. It was at this point that the axe fell on the 7th Suffolks who, on the 19th May, transferred a total of eleven Officers and four hundred and eight men to the 1/1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment. This was one of a small number of pre-war county Territorial Regiments that did not have a Regular Army equivalent. In line with the entire Territorial Force, they had been mobilised on 4th August 1914, having just completed their annual fourteen-day training camp. They would eventually cross to France on 15th February 1915.
Having now returned to full strength, the Cambridgeshires then entered into a four-week period of intensive training but now with the emphasis on attack as opposed to defence. This change had come about after the failure of the German Spring Offensive which had begun on 21st March with the aim of breaking through the allied lines, allowing them then to march on Paris and the Channel Ports. Although they had succeeded in some sections, the allied line held firm in others. It was now felt among the Allies that the time had arrived for them to go onto the attack and hopefully end the war in 1918.
Beginning on 8th August, in what later would be known as the “Hundred Day Offensive”, the battle began with a series of allied assaults on the German front line. In the original plan, Robert with his comrades in the Cambridgeshires, were initially to have remained in reserve but shortly before the start of the main assault they received orders to mount an attack on the French village of Marlancourt. Leaving their trenches at thirty minutes past midnight, the battalion, now serving in the 35th Brigade of the 12th (Eastern) Division, began their advance across some one thousand yards of “NO MANS LAND”. Now fully aware of the attacks right along their front, the Germans then began firing a heavy artillery barrage into the advancing troops which included gas shells. As the Cambridgeshires scrambled to fit their gas masks their advance stalled, but with their Officers and N.C.O.s urging the men on and now being supported by a single tank, the infantrymen surged forward with the enemy’s line captured by 7am. Over the following ten days the battalion continue to hold the line which they had so recently captured, being relieved on the 19th August to rest and reorganise. Just three days later they were back in the fray, fighting several minor actions until the 26th August, the day of Robert’s death, when the Germans began a full-scale retreat from their full back positions, with the men of the 12th Division in pursuit. It would no doubt have been during this rapid advance that Robert met his end, possibly caused by a bursting shell as the German artillery laid down fire with the aim of protecting their withdrawing infantry.
How he died is not known, with his remains never being identified. He is now remembered, with over nine thousand other British and Commonwealth soldiers, on the Vis-En-Artois memorial to the missing. (See below)
After Robert’s death his wife Agnes had been awarded a weekly pension for her and her two young daughters of £1.5s.5d (£1.27p). This would remain with increases up until the girls had their sixteenth birthdays, when their proportion of the pension would be stopped. Following on from these payments Agnes, in December 1919, would have received a gratuity that would eventually amount to a total sum of £21.9s.8d (£21.48p) for the loss of her husband.
As with all other men who lost their lives their next of kin could claim the medal awards. For Robert this would have been the British War and Victory medal pair with his named memorial plaque and scroll.
The location of these is unknown.
Copy of Robert Howard’s Will
Taken from his original Soldiers Paybook