Pte 57793 Richard Irving

• Age: 20
• From: Wheatley Hill, Durham
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: A.41

Richard Irving was born in 1897 in Wheatley Hill colliery village, Durham, the son of Joseph Irving and his wife Isabella (nee Nicholson) who  married in 1893. His father was a coal miner.

At the time of the 1901 census at 21 Sophia St, Seaham Harbour,

Richard was 4 years old and living with his parents Joseph who was 32 and a miner, probably is Seaham Colliery and Isabella also aged 32 who had been born in Haswell Colliery village. Richard had two brothers, William Nicholson aged 6 and Marshall aged 1 both born in Seaham Harbour.

By the time of the 1911 Census the family have moved to 19 Cooke Street, New Seaham.

Richard is 15 and is employed as a miner (pony driver below ground), he lives with his parents and five siblings. His father, Joseph, is now 43 years of age and is employed as a miner, deputy overman below ground, his mother is also 43 years old. They advise that they have been married for 18 years and have had six children, all of whom have survived. His siblings are shown as; William Nicholson a 17 year old miner below ground (electric signals), Marshall is 11 years old, Joseph is 6, Norah is 4 and Lydia is 2.  

Richard enlisted in Sunderland and was formerly 98, Northumberland Divisional Cyclist Company and was serving in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 57793 when he was killed in action aged 20 on the 9th April 1917.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the 9th April for the 17th, 19th and 20th Battalions in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool):

The 89th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19th King's on the right and the 20th King’s on the left. The 17th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and the 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 19th 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 20th 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 21st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20th 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 89th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19th and 20th 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 10th April.

Of the 17th 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.

Richard now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France.

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

Soldiers Effects and Pension to mother Isabella, 19 Cook St, New Seaham.

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