Pte 52239 Reginald Vaughan Davies

• Age: 21
• From: Manchester
• 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.26

Reginald Vaughan Davies was born on 12th September 1895 and was baptised on the 18th December 1895 in St Michael's Church, Hulme, Manchester. He was the son of George Davies and his wife Elizabeth Ellen (nee Lester/Leister). The baptism records that the family are living at 91 George Street, Hulme, and George is working as a joiner.

At the time of the 1901 Census the family were living at 8 Dudley Street, Dudley, Worcestershire. The 5 year old Reginald V. was living with his parents and younger brother Herbert O. aged 1, born Dudley. His father George was 43, born Cosheston, Pembroke, and working as a carpenters labourer, his mother Elizabeth was 35, born Sunderland. 

By 1911 the family are back in Manchester at 2 Melbourne Place, Hulme. Reginald is 15 and working as an outside porter, his brother Herbert Owen aged 11 is at school. His father George is 53, occupation property demolisher, and his mother, Elizabeth, is aged 44 and is a shirt maker. They advise that they have been married for 18 years and have had 3 children 2 of whom have survived. 

Reginald had first enlisted in the Royal Marine Light Infantry in August 1914, PLY/16846, but was discharged invalided in the December then re-enlisted as Private 4026 in the Manchester Regiment. He was serving in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 52339 when he was killed in action on the 9th April 1917 aged 21.

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. 

Reginald now rests at St Martin-Calvaire British Cemetery, France. The inscription on his headstone reads:

“HE DIED THAT WE MAY LIVE”

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 George, Pension to mother Elizabeth Ellen.

According to the National Roll of The Great War Reginald volunteered in May 1915: He was shortly afterwards sent to France. There he participated in strenuous fighting in Ypres, Festubert, Loos, Albert and Vimy Ridge, and did excellent work until he fell in action on the Somme in April 1917. He was entitled to the 1914-15 Star, and the General Service and Victory medals. “Whilst we remember the sacrifice is not in vain”

On the 1921 Census the remaining family, mother, father and brother Herbert O. are still living in Hulme.

His mother died in the March quarter of 1922, aged 55.

CWGC records show he was the son of George and Elizabeth Ellen Davies, of 16, Rosebery Street., Moss Side, Manchester.

His father served in the Royal Marines in 1914, at Dunkirk and Antwerp.

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