Pte 15213 Leslie Alsop

• Age: 24
• 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.19

Leslie Alsop was born 25th March 1893 in Liverpool the son of John Henry and Lavinia Alsop (nee Jones), "Belbrigge," 1, Uppingham Rd., West Derby, Liverpool.

They had married on the 13th Feb 1884 at St. Thomas, Ardwick. John was a 26 year old coal merchant of West Derby, Lavinia was 24 of Ardwick.

Leslie may have been born in Liverpool but was baptised in St. Thomas, Ardwick, Manchester on 4 June 1893. His father was a coal merchant and the parents’ address is given as 6 Worcester Drive North, Clubmoor, Liverpool. He was educated at St Margaret's Church of England School, Aigburth, Liverpool from 1899. 

The 1901 Census shows the family living at 25 Belmont Drive, Liverpool. His father, John Henry, is aged 44, a coal merchant born in Manchester,and his mother, Lavinia, is also aged 40 and born in Manchester, their children were born in Liverpool, Dora Constance 15, William 14, Mabel 12, and Leslie 8.

The 1911 Census shows the family living at 25 Belmont Drive, Liverpool. His father, John, is aged 53, born 1858 and is a coal merchant, his mother Lavinia is aged 51 with no occupation listed. They advised that they had been married for 27 years and have had five children of which one had sadly died. At the taking of the Census they have three children living with them, William aged 24, born 1887 and employed as a clerk for a coal merchant, Mabel aged 22, born 1889 is also a clerk and Leslie aged 18, born 1893 is at school. They have a domestic servant Hannah Walton aged 35, born 1876 in Liverpool also living with them.    

Leslie joined the 17^th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private 15213.

He was billeted at Prescot Watch Factory from 14^th September 1914, he trained there and also at Knowsley Hall. On 30th April 1915 the 17th Battalion alongside the other three Pals battalions left Liverpool via Prescot Station for further training at Belton Park, Grantham. They remained here until September 1915 when they reached Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain. He arrived in France on 7^th November 1915.

He was killed in action on the 9th April 1917, aged 24, during the opening day of the Battle of Arras when the Pals attacked the strongly held German positions on the Hindenburg Line. 

17^th,  19^th & 20th Battalions at the Battle of Arras 09/04/1917

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 the 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 3.7p.m. 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.

His death was reported in the Liverpool Echo on 21st April 1917:

DEATHS

Killed In Action

ALSOP - April 9, killed in action, aged 24 years, Pte Leslie, K.L.R., the younger son of Mr and Mrs John H. Alsop, 25 Belmont Drive, Newsham Park.

Leslie now lies in St Martin Calvaire British Cemetery, France. The Inscription on his headstone reads:

“GOD IS LOVE”

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.

Soldiers Effects to father John H., no Pension record found.

Leslie is also commemorated in Liverpool on the following Memorials: 

Birchfield County Primary School

Collegiate School

St James Church, West Derby

International Cotton Association, Walker House, Exchange Flags, Liverpool.

His father, John Henry, 1 Uppingham Road, West Derby, died on the 28th September 1934, aged 77.

Probate 30th Oct to Lavinia Alsop, Mabel Clare and Dora Constance Robinson. Effects £3214 4s 6d

His mother, Lavinia, died of bronchitis at "Sannox", Leyfield Close, West Derby, on the 08th January 1947 aged 87, she was cremated on the 13th January at Liverpool.

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