Pte 52168 Fred Horton

• Age: 26
• From: Bramhall, Ches
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Arras Memorial
  Panel Ref: Bay 3

Fred Horton was born in 1890 in Bramhall, Cheshire and was the son of Herbert Stephen Horton and his wife Mary Ann (nee Powell) who were married in 1889 at All Saints Church, Cheadle Hulme.

The 1891 Census shows the family living at Ack Lane, Bramhall with head Mary Powell(crossed out) and her son James Powell aged 19.  -  Father Herbert is aged 23 b.Cheadle Hulme, mother Mary Ann is aged 24 b.Handforth, son Fred aged 6 months b.Bramhall.

By the time of the 1901 Census the family have moved to 56 Moss Lane, Bramhall  -  father Herbert S. aged 33, a gardener, mother Mary A. aged 31 with children Herbert aged 5, and James K. aged 2.  Fred Horton was residing at 40 Ack Lane, Bramhall with his widowed Grandmother Mary Powell aged 67.

They have moved again at the time of the 1911 Census to 40 Ack Lane. Father Herbert Stephen aged 43, a gardener, mother Mary Ann aged 42 (married 22 years with 5 children), children all born Bramhall, Fred aged 20, a Postman, Alfred 17 a gardener, Herbert 15 a gardener, James Richard 12 at school, and Hilda 4.

He enlisted in Manchester and originally served as Private 3055 in the Manchester Regiment. Following a transfer he was serving in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 52168 when he was killed in action on the 9^th April 1917, aged 26.

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded. 

Fred's body was not recovered or was subsequently lost as he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, France.

The ARRAS MEMORIAL commemorates almost 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918, the eve of the Advance to Victory, and have no known grave. The most conspicuous events of this period were the Arras offensive of April-May 1917, and the German attack in the spring of 1918. Canadian and Australian servicemen killed in these operations are commemorated by memorials at Vimy and Villers-Bretonneux. A separate memorial remembers those killed in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Both cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick. The memorial was unveiled by Lord Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Air Force on the 31 July 1932 (originally it had been scheduled for 15 May, but due to the sudden death of French President Doumer, as a mark of respect, the ceremony was postponed until July).

He is also commemorated on the War Memorial at Bramhall, Cheshire.

Parents appear on the 1939 register at 16 Ack Lane. Herbert Stephen, dob 24th Dec 1866, Mary Ann, dob 10th Nov 1868.

The father died aged 82 in 1950. 

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