Pte 57851 Robert Wigham

• Age: 27
• From: Silksworth Durham
• 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.12

Robert Watson Wigham was born in Silksworth, County Durham in the June quarter of 1890 to Robert Wigham and his wife Ann (nee Watson) who were married in 1887 in Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham.  

His mother died before he was 1 year old.

The 1891 Census shows him and his widowed father living together at 9 William Street, Bishop Wearmouth, Durham. His father was 29 and a miner.

By the time of the 1901 Census Robert senior is living as a boarder in the home of another miner and his family at 27 Bents Cottages, South Shields. Robert junior aged 11, is living with his grandparents Robert Watson aged 65 who is a miner’s stoneman and Jane Watson aged 63. Also living there are two more grandsons - William Wigham aged 12 who must be Robert’s brother and James Warfendale aged 15. 

The 1911 Census records that Robert’s grandmother, Jane is now a widow. Robert senior and his son Robert are living with her at 5 Eglington Street, Monkwearmouth, Sunderland. 

Robert, at the age of 21, married Mary Chrystal in 1911. They had a son, Robert Sytevenson Wigham born on 04th June 1911, another son James born on 08th February 1913 and a daughter, Annie, who was born on 07th July 1917. 

Robert enlisted in Sunderland joining the Army Cyclist Corps as Private 15851. He was subsequently transferred to the 19th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 57851.

Robert was killed in action on the 9th April 1917, aged 27, just a few months before his daughter Annie was born.

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.

Robert now rests at St Martin Calvaire British Cemetery in France.

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 widow Mary living at 17 Brooke Street, Sunderland received his soldiers Effects and was awarded a pension for herself and her three children.

His widow, Mary, died in the March quarter of 1974, aged 82.