Pte 15525 Rupert Victor Lessells

• Age: 23
• From: Penmaenmawr, Merioneth
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 17th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Arras Memorial
  Panel Ref: Bay 3

Rupert Victor Lessells was born on 27th March 1894 at Penmaenmawr, Caernarvonshire. He was the son of George William Lessells and his wife Ada Mary (nee Palmer) who were married on the 18th Sept 1886 in Bristol.

The family lived at 23 Windsor Street, New Brighton at the time of the 1901 census.

George was a book keeper and was 44 and had been born in Durham. His wife Mary was born in Bristol and was 38. The family had moved around as shown by the birthplaces of their children. The year after their marriage in Bristol, Ada gave birth to their daughter Clarice in 1887 while they were living in Liverpool. Their son Horace followed in 1888 while they lived in New Brighton, and Rupert in 1894 while they were living at Bryn Dedwyndd in the parish of Dolwynddelan, Carnarvon.

The 1911 census records the family living at 12 Riverdale Road, Seacombe. 

Father George William aged 54 is a storeskeeper for the City Council b.Sunderland, mother Ada Mary 49 (married 24 years 3 children), Rupert is 17 and is working as an insurance clerk. His sister Clarice Adele 23 is a typist for a provisions company, and brother Horace Allan 22 is a clerk in an iron and tinplate company. 

Rupert enlisted in Liverpool joining the 17th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 15525.

He was billeted at Prescot Watch Factory from 14th September 1914, he trained there and also at Knowsley Hall. On 30th April 1915 the 17th Battalion alongside the other three Pals battalions left Liverpool via Prescot Station for further training at Belton Park, Grantham. They remained here until September 1915 when they reached Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain. He arrived in France on 7th November 1915. He was killed in action serving in "B" Company of the 17th Battalion on the 9th April 1917, aged 23, during the Battle of Arras.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the 9th April 1917 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 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 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.

Rupert'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).

The Liverpool Daily Post of the 23rd April 1917 carried the following death notices:

Lessells – April 9th aged 23 years Rupert Victor KLR dearly loved younger son of George and Ada Lessells Riverside Road, Wallasey.

Lessells – on Easter Monday, instantaneously killed, in France Rupert Lessells, sadly missed by his sister Clarice (Tad)

Liverpool Daily Post of the 23rd April 1918

LESSELLS - In loving memory of RUPERT VICTOR, K.L.R., killed Easter Monday 1917. - Sadly missed by his Father, Mother and Sister

LESSELLS - In affectionate remembrance of my brother RUPERT, K.L.R., killed fighting April 9, 1917. - Horace.

Soldiers Effects to father George Wm., Pension to father and sister(?)A.M.Lessells

father died on the 25th March 1925 aged 68 in Liverpool and mother died on 16th Jan 1931 aged 67 also in Liverpool.

Rupert’s brother Horace also served, in the Cheshire Regiment and Labour Corps number 34212. He later emigrated to the USA.

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