Pte 42772 Herbert Henry Wolfe

• Age: 32
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 17th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: St Martin Calvaire Brit Cem
  Panel Ref: I.A.21

Herbert Henry Wolfe was born in Liverpool in  October 1884 the son of Herbert John Slaney Wolfe and his wife Elizabeth (nee Ellison), who were married in January 1881 at Holy Trinity Church, Wavertree, Liverpool. He was baptised on 07th December 1884 at Holy Trinity Church in Wavertree. 

Herbert had two sisters, Nora who was born in 1882 and Alice born in 1887. Sadly their mother Elizabeth died in 1889 at the age of 34.

The 1891 census records their father as an inmate in The Liverpool Convalescent Institution in Woolton “for the reception and treatment of persons of all classes debilitated by sickness (non infectious) or overwork”. The children, Nora aged 8, Herbert aged 6 and 4 year old Alice are living with their 20 year old cousin Thomas Ellison at 103 Stevenson Street, Wavertree. The household is multigenerational, also under Thomas’s roof is their grandmother Martha Ellison aged 73, their aunt Alice (their mothers sister), Alice’s husband and baby and her child from her first marriage, another one of their mothers sisters called Martha and her young son and also a visitor.

Herbert’s father Herbert senior marries for a second time later in 1891. His wife is called Eliza Jane Whittle who was a widow with children from her first marriage. The 1901 census records the couple living with Herbert who is now 16 and is working as a plumbers apprentice, and his sister Alice. Eliza’s sons 18 year old William and 14 year old Richard are also living with the family at 7, Stevenson Street.

20 year old Herbert married 18 year old Edith Bate on 23rd October 1904 at St Peter's Church in Liverpool.

The 1911 census shows the couple living at 60 Bartlett Street, Wavertree. Herbert is recorded as a milk dealer. The couple have four children – Louisa aged 5, Herbert aged 4, Robert 2 and John aged 1.

The couple went on to have three more children; Harry born in the March quarter of 1912, Edith born in the June quarter of 1914 and Lily born in the March quarter of 1916.

Herbert enlisted in Liverpool and was serving with the 17th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 42772 when he was killed in action during the opening day of the Battle of Arras. He was 32 years of age.

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.

Herbert Henry now rests at St Martin Calvaire Cemetery in France where his headstone bears the epitaph:

"NOT MINE BUT THY WILL OH LORD 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.

Herbert's death was reported in the local press Liverpool Echo on the 30th April 1917:

KILLED IN ACTION
 
Private H H Wolfe (33) of 21 Annerley Street, Earle Road, Liverpool has been killed in action. He leaves a wife and seven young children. He was previously employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.

Soldiers Effects were sent to his widow Edith, who also received a Pension for herself and her seven children.

His father died in 1922, aged 63, and was buried on the 01st June at West Derby Cemetery, his address at the time of his death was 26 Dodge Street.

His widow, Edith, remarried in 1933 to John J. Carruthers.

Edith, dob 18th Jan 1886, appears on the 1939 register at 10 Nebo St, Wavertree. She is once again widowed and is living with children Ruth and Herbert Wolfe.

She died in 1960, aged 74.

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