Pte 57834 Horace Sharman

• Age: 28
• From: Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Arras Memorial
  Panel Ref: Bay 3

Horace Sharman was born on the 28th April 1889 was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He was the son of George Sharman and his wife Mary Ann (nee Fox) who were married at St Nicholas' Church, Great Yarmouth in October 1880.  Horace's father was born on the 04th May 1857 in Great Yarmouth, the son of John Harris and Sarah (nee King) Sharman. 

Horace’s father George is not present on the 1891 census record, but his mother is still listed as married. Great Yarmouth is a busy herring fishing post at this point and Horace’s baptism records tell that George is a fisherman, so it can be presumed he is away at sea. Mary Ann is 28 and is looking after her four children – George aged 7, James 5, Horace 2 and 6 month old John. Their address is 5 Marshalls Buildings, Nelson Road, Great Yarmouth. 

The 1901 census records that sadly at some time in the intervening years since the last census George had died and Mary Ann is a widow. Before George died, three more children were born to the couple, so Mary Ann was left a widow with eight children. Six of the children were living at home in 1901, at Tooley Street, Skirbeck which is a small village on the outskirts of Boston, Lincolnshire. The children at home are George who is 17 and working as a gardener, John aged 9, Mary Ann aged 7, Edward 5, Dorothy 4 and Esther 3. The family must have moved to Skirbeck sometime around 1894 as Mary Ann and the subsequent children were all born there. James, now aged 14 is in Skirbeck Fever Isolation Hospital, only one of four patients, sadly he died a few years later in 1905.

In 1901 Horace is found living in the Port of Hull Orphans Home, Cottingham Road, Kingston on Thames, the home was to educate and clothe the fatherless children of sailors. Most of the children living there are fishermens or mariners children. The home was run on a cottage style basis with groups of approximately 25 children living together with a house mother in 10 different houses. Horace lived in St Andrews House. Photos and descriptions can be found at www.childrenshomes.org.uk/HullSailors, in fact there’s a photo of the children of St Andrews House dated the early 1900s, so it’s entirely possible that 12 year old Horace is on that photo. 

Mary Ann married again on the 12th June 1903 in Boston. Her new husband was Henry Peter Neilson with whom she had a son called Henry James Sharman on the 06th March 1906.

The 1911 census records Mary Ann as being married but her new husband is not present, so it is possible that he was a fisherman or sailor. The family are living at 11 Gleebe Terrace, Boston. Horace is now 22 and is working as a fish labourer, his sister Mary Ann is a domestic servant, Edward’s occupation is listed as boots, Dorothy is a dressmaker, Esther at school and Henry Nielson is at home.

Horace enlisted in Sunderland joining the Army Cyclist Corps as Private 399. He transferred to the 19th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 57834. He was killed in action on 09/04/1917 aged 28.  

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.

Horace's body was not recovered from the battlefield and his name is on the Arras Memorial in 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). 

His family commemorated the one year anniversary of his death in the Boston Guardian on the 13th April 1918:

Sharman – in loving and affectionate remembrance of a dear son and brother Pte Horace Sharman, King’s Liverpools, who was killed in action somewhere in France April 9th, 1917 aged 27.

A devoted son, friend and brother.

One of God’s best towards his mother;

He bravely answered duty’s call,

His life he gave for one and all,

Unknown to the world he stands by my side;

And whispers “Dear mother, death cannot divide”.

Inserted by his loving mother and dad, and sisters and brothers.

Horace is commemorated on the Boston War Memorial and the Boston WW1 Centenary Obelisk.

His mother died in the September quarter of 1936, aged 73.

We currently have no further information on Horace Sharman, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.