My corner of a foreign field

SEARCHING the stark wall, I don't quite know how to respond. Panel after panel, each etched with the serried ranks of hundreds of soldiers' names, attest to the waste of war in this quiet corner of France. To comprehend the full enormity of the losses on just this one sector of the Western Front is impossible.

Here alone, at St Touret monument, near Bethune, are recorded the names of more than 12,000 men who have no known grave. But the cold engravings become very personal as I spot the name of my great-grandfather, Corporal Arthur Curson.

Running my fingers along the chiselled letters, a warm surge of emotion overwhelms me as I experience a real connection with someone I never met - and yet having followed in his final steps, I feel I now know intimately.

Standing back in silence and watching the clear blue sky through a crescent in the Portland stone monument, I feel a sense of accomplishment in the completion of a pilgrimage. And it is with a measure of pride that, as the first member of his family to visit the battlefield where his life was rudely taken by a mortar bomb, I find myself paying homage.

My thoughts go to his grief-stricken widow and two young daughters, who emigrated to South Africa - and I can't help reflecting that his sacrifice in a shell-pocked field in a corner of France was a small, but important, factor leading to my own existence.

What became a personal quest began as a mild curiosity as a child, when I learned that my maternal great-grandfather had died in the First World War. But then, didn't most families have a relative who died in the Great War, I thought? And so the matter rested until I moved from South Africa to North Yorkshire.

My interest was aroused by the fact that Arthur had served in the 2nd Yorkshire Regiment and had once lived in York. His biography was sketchy. Born in 1881 in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, Arthur grew up in an orphanage and enlisted as a bandsman at the age of 15.

Following a spell in India, the regiment spent two years in Cape Town, South Africa, where he met his wife Lily. Lily's family frowned on her relationship with a lowly soldier, but they eventually relented and gave their consent to marriage. The couple moved with the regiment to Fulford barracks in York, where my grandmother Alice and her sister were born, while Arthur doubled as Methodist lay minister at York's James Street Chapel.

There the trail ran cold. Although a visit to York found the church replaced by a spare parts shop, I managed to trace Professor Kingsley Barrett, of Durham City, whose father had also ministered at the church.

I did not have to wait long to learn from him of a Mary Boler in Scarborough, whose parents briefly rented accommodation to Arthur's widow and children. Visiting a living link to the past and listening to her recall the "poor men" on a memorial in the church, further heightened my interest.

A telephone call to the War Graves Commission and another piece of the jigsaw fell into place. Within seconds, I was told Arthur had died in action March 10, 1914, on the first day of the battle of Neuve Chapelle, and had no known grave.

And, with astonishing efficiency, I had the directions to Le Touret monument and where his name was recorded posted to me within a day. I finally had a time and place, but what of how he died? And then a letter emerged.

Written in a neat copperplate hand from the trenches by a Private GH Sands, it brought home Arthur's last moments with a stark and haunting clarity.

Writing of the opening of the battle, Pte Sands wrote: "He (Arthur) was in charge of our section and we made our own advance at 3.30pm along with everybody. Everything went well until it got dark... the orders came along to dig in.

"Your poor husband got us four together and said, 'Now come on let us work hard and get dug in, then we will be safe'. We had not been at it more than five minutes when one of those bombs from a trench mortar came along and burst just besides us.

"Of course, we were that much determined on getting ourselves made safe that we took no notice for a while. The chap who was between your husband and I called out, 'Are you alright corporal, how are you getting on with it?' meaning the digging. And, getting no answer, I went just a couple of paces, and found your poor husband huddled up. He must have caught the full explosion and death must have been instantaneous."

The men were ordered to moved on, dig in and then move yet again. The next day the platoon was upset at not being able to find Arthur's body.

Private Sands wrote: "I would have liked to have taken his Bible and anything that you would treasure from him, but to have struck a match while we were in the battle would have meant death to all of us, besides it is strictly against orders.

"So as you can see, if it had not happened in the dark, everything possible would have been done for the one you dearly loved."

The last pieces in the jigsaw fell into place when I discovered that, as a member of a Yorkshire regiment, Arthur was a Green Howard. By an uncanny twist of fate, I found myself working directly opposite the Green Howards Regimental Museum in Richmond, where helpful museum staff opened their records, enabling me to trace his last months.

Armed with details of their daily dispositions, and with the added help of a detailed map from George Riordan, of Northallerton, whose father had served with Arthur, I set off to cycle the lanes he had marched along almost 90 years ago.

Last stationed in Guernsey, the 2nd Battalion landed at Zeebrugge, Belgium, to form part of the 7th Division on October 7, 1914. They were almost immediately thrown into battle at Ypres, where they held off the German advance - among their adversaries, one Adolf Hitler.

Having lost ten officers, and 655 other ranks killed and wounded, the remaining 300 men moved down to Ploegstreet and then Fleurbaix, where regimental diaries recount endless days improving trenches in rotting boots, brushwood fatigues and boredom, relieved only by shellfire and sniping. Their only small comfort was watching the Germans having to bail water out of their trenches as well.

The battle to take Neuve Chapelle began on March 10, 1915, with a massive artillery attack on a 2,000-yard front. The initial assault was a complete success, but the British attack lost momentum as communications broke down. And a massive German counter attack on March 12 brought the battle to an end, with British losses of 12,000 for no more than 2km of land. The battle was significant as it sowed the seeds in Field Marshal Haig's mind for what was to become the Battle of the Somme.

In an eerie postscript, as I cycled away, a documents file fell out of my saddlebag. Seconds after pulling off the road to pick it up, a heavy lorry thundered past, narrowly missing me. But it hit the file, sending paperwork flying. I was deeply upset to find a page of the Pte Sands' letter had vanished completely.

Not a believer in the supernatural, I found myself, however, wondering whether its loss was meant. Either way, a full circle had been completed, and I could return home in the knowledge that Arthur had not been forgotten and that his memory was assured.

* Do you know what happened to Pte Sands? Contact Gavin Engelbrecht at Features, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, or email gavin.engelbrechtour poor husband got