A/Cpl 57597 James Picken

 

In 1901 the family is living at 73 Seamore Street, Maryhill, Glasgow, with three children. His father is a tailor and clothier. Both his parents are 33, James is 7, Agnes 3, and Ander (Andrew?) is 2.

James was educated at Napiershall.

Unfortunately, the 1911 census is not available.

 

Prior to enlisting he was employed in his father's business as a tailors cutter.

He enlisted on 06th October 1915 in the 1/3rd Lowland Division Cyclist Corps. He transferred to the Scottish Rifles in January 1916 and was appointed master tailor. In Aigust 1916 he was again transferred this time to the Army Cyclist Corps. 

James was then subsequently transferred to the 20th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment and was wounded on 09th April 1917 during the opening day of the Battle of Arras.

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.

James sadly died of wounds on the 15th April 1917, aged 23, at No.26 base hospital at Etaples.

He now rests at Etaples Military Cemetery where his headstone bears the epitaph:

“LOVED AND REMEMBERED TILL THE DAY BREAKS AND THE SHADOWS FLEE AWAY”

During the First World War, the area around Etaples was the scene of immense concentrations of Commonwealth reinforcement camps and hospitals. It was remote from attack, except from aircraft, and accessible by railway from both the northern or the southern battlefields. In 1917, 100,000 troops were camped among the sand dunes and the hospitals, which included eleven general, one stationary, four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot, could deal with 22,000 wounded or sick. In September 1919, ten months after the Armistice, three hospitals and the Q.M.A.A.C. convalescent depot remained.

The cemetery contains 10,771 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, the earliest dating from May 1915. 35 of these burials are unidentified. It is the largest CWGC cemetery in France, and was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

He was reported as died of wounds in the Scotsman on  17th May 1917.

His Army effects and a War Gratuity of £7-10s went to his father Andrew, who was James’ executor.  The pension card in the name of his mother Mary at 16 Carlton Terrace, Kelvinside, Glasgow, does not specify the amount of pension awarded.

 

Sadly, James’ military memorabilia went up for sale in London in 2016:  his British War and Victory Medals, as well as his Memorial Plaque and framed Scroll, with assorted badges and buttons; also including a miniature portrait of James in Army Cyclist Corps uniform.  Asking price £140-180.

 

James is commemorated on the following Memorials:

Scottish National War Memorial

Glasgow Roll of Honour

The Tailors Roll of Honour (Virtual).