Pte 42878 Frederick Olver

• Age: 34
• From: Woolton, Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: St Martin Calvaire Brit Cem
  Panel Ref: I.A.7

Frederick Olver was born on 08th March 1883 in Woolton, Liverpool  the son of Henry Olver and his wife Elizabeth (nee Edwards) who married in St Peters Church, Liverpool on the 22nd May 1870. He was baptised at St Mary's Church, Edge Hill on 24th May 1898. 

Frederick’s father, Henry, was a stonemason, as was his father. Sadly, his father, Henry, died aged 40 in 1890 when Frederick was just seven years old.

The 1891 census shows the widowed Elizabeth, aged 39 born in Speke, living with her children at 4 Vale Road, Woolton. Children all born Much Woolton, Frederick was 8, and he had six siblings: Thomas who was 20 years old and was working as an accounts clerk, William who was 17 and an apprentice joiner, Charles 12, Ada 10, Arthur 5 and Alfred aged 2.

On the 1901 census Frederick, aged 22?, is boarding at 1 Bank Place, Preston with the Goss family, he is a bricklayer.

His family live at 30 Cantsfield Street, Edge Hill. Mother Elizabeth, aged 49, just has three children living at home – Charles aged 22 who is now a joiner, Arthur is 15 a tailors fitter, and Alfred J. aged 12 who is still at school. Elizabeth’s uncle William Edwards is also living there. The 1901 census also shows Frederick’s sister Martha living in Claughton, Birkenhead and is working as a ladies maid to household of three women, she’s part of a live-in domestic staff of six. Martha marries in 1903. Ada is part of a domestic staff of three in the household of a professor of music, the professor and his wife have nine adult offspring living at home in Canning Street, Liverpool. His younger brother Arthur emigrated to Canada on the SS Arabic out of Liverpool on the 8th Oct 1910. Especially interesting is the fact Elizabeth Brookfield, aged 30, was travelling with him.

 Frederick had been in the USA since 1907 and was living with elder brother William and his wife Elizabeth, and brother Alfred, at Clinton Avenue, West Hoboken which is just across the Hudson from New York.

There are several records of Frederick sailing between Liverpool and New York, listed as a bricklayer or mason. He is recorded in the 1910 American census as living in New Jersey with his brother William, William’s wife Elizabeth, their 11 year old daughter and also his other brother Alfred.

Fred enlisted in Liverpool and was serving in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 42878 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917, aged 34.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day 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.

Frederick now rests at St Martin-Calvaire British Cemetery, France. The inscription on his headstone reads:

“THY WILL BE DONE”

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 9 April 1917. It was lost in March 1918 but retaken in the following August. St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery was named from a calvary which was destroyed during the war. It was begun by units of the 30th Division in April 1917 and used until March 1918. Plot II was made in August and September 1918. The cemetery contains 228 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, five of them unidentified. There are also three German graves within the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

His family placed notices in the Liverpool Echo on the 26th April 1917:

Olver – April 9th, killed in action, Fred, fourth and dearly loved son of Elizabeth and the late Henry Olver, 43 Fulwood Road, Aigburth.

Fred is also commemorated on the following Memorials:

Hall of Remembrance, Liverpool Town Hall, Panel 62

Holy Trinity C of E Church, Wavertree, Liverpool 

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records that he was married, his wife Elizabeth lived at 4, Coventry Road, Wavertree, Liverpool. They had a child born in the September quarter of 1911 he was named Frederick Brookfield Olver.

Soldiers Effects to widow Elizabeth

Pension to widow Elizabeth and child Frederick Brookfield Olver

His aunt placed a notice in the press on the 01st April 1918:

Olver – In loving remembrance of Fred, killed in action Easter Monday 1917. The great sacrifice – Aunt Kate , 34 Gorsedale Road 

His mother died, aged 79, in the June quarter of 1931, in Birkenhead.