Pte 51663 Richard Nicholson Cuthbert

• 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.20

Richard Nicholson Cuthbert was born in Liverpool on the 07th January 1893, the son of John Cuthbert and his wife Sarah Ann (nee Nicholson) who were married in 1886 at All Saints Church, Liverpool. He was baptised 22nd February 1893 at St Stephen's Church, Byrom Street Liverpool, the register records his father as an engineer and the family address is 48 Great Crosshall Street, Liverpool.

A sister Mabel died in infancy in 1899.

James’s father John died at the age of 38 in 1900 an engineer, and was buried on the 21st February 1900 at Anfield Cemetery.

The 1901 Census records his widow Sarah Ann aged 38 running a grocers shop at 43 Mount Pleasant, Waterloo. Living with her are her five children – Edith aged 11, Charles 9, Richard 8, Sarah 5 and 10 month old Ivy. As John was buried in February 1900, that means that little Ivy was not yet born when her father died.

The family are living in the same street at the time of the 1911 Census, this time at number 34 where Sarah Ann aged 48, (6 children 5 still alive) still has a grocers shop. Her daughter Edith aged 21 is also working in the shop. Charles aged 19 is a clerk for a shipping agent and Richard aged 18 is a clerk for a wine and spirit merchant. Sarah is at home and Ivy aged 10 is at school.

Richard enlisted in Seaforth, Liverpool Enlisted as a Rifleman in the 6th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Rifles). He embarked from Folkestone-Boulogne on 19th July 1916 reaching the 24th Infantry Base Depot on 20th July 1916. He proceeded to the 11th Entrenching Battalion on 02nd August 1916 then proceeded to 17th Bn K.L.R. on 05th August 1916. 

He was serving in the 17th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 51663 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917, aged 24, during the Battle of Arras.

17^th  19^th & 20th  Battalion 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 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 3.7p.m. At 4p.m.Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40p.m., 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.

He was reported killed in the Liverpool Daily Post on the 10th May 1917. 

Richard now rests at St Martin-Calvaire British Cemetery, France.

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 09 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. 

He was reported killed in the Liverpool Daily Post 26th April 1917.

CUTHBERT - Killed in action, aged 24 years, Richard Nicholson Cuthbert, King's (Liverpool Regiment), the beloved son of Mrs S. Cuthbert, 13 Adelaide Road, Seaforth, Liverpool.

Richard is also commemorated on the following War Memorials:

Waterloo with Seaforth Civic Memorial

St John’s Church of England Church, Waterloo.

Soldiers Effects and Pension to his mother Sarah Ann.

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