Name
Arthur Odell
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
26/02/1918
21
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Lance Corporal
G/15640
Royal Sussex Regiment
13th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 (Mons) Star, British War and Victory Medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
FINS NEW BRITISH CEMETERY, SOREL-LE-GRAND
IV. C. 10
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Pirton Village War Memorial,
St Mary’s Shrine, Pirton,
Methodist Chapel Plaque, Pirton,
Pirton School Memorial
Biography
The official records held by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission record Arthur as the son of Mrs. M. (Mary) Odell, of 2 Royal Oak Lane, Pirton, Hitchin, Herts., but fail to mention her husband, and Arthur’s father, John Odell, although he was certainly living at the time.
Mary’s maiden name was Dawson and she married John Odell on November 27th 1880. The family, including eleven children(*1), is identified from the various censuses of 1891, 1901 and 1911. They were recorded as living near Little Lane and in Dead Horse Lane, later renamed as Royal Oak Lane - in fact these could all have been the same house.
Three of their children served in the Great War; James, the eldest son, served in the navy and survived, Arthur, the subject of this chapter and born in Pirton, and his younger brother Fred, both served in the army and both died.
Arthur was working as a farm labourer in 1911, but before the war he began working for a company that produced yeast in Bucklesbury, Hitchin. He joined the Hitchin Territorials six months before the war and then, when war came, quickly volunteered for overseas service and joined the 1st Hertfordshire Regiment. The September Parish Magazine records that he did this before the end of 1914 and later the Hertfordshire Express reported that he had gone to France with the Herts. Regiment in August 1914. The latter was incorrect as the Hertfordshires did not embark for France until November 5th. At that date Arthur was only eighteen and officially should not have gone abroad to fight until the age of nineteen.
The Hertfordshire Express reported that Arthur had been wounded, shot in the arm before his 19th birthday. That would have been before May 4th 1915. The Parish Magazine of September 1915 records him as still with the 1st Hertfordshires, so presumably, it was some time after that date that he was transferred to the Transport Section of the 13th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. The exact date of that transfer is not known, but it must have been before September 10th 1916, because a newspaper cutting about the death of John Parsell on that date mentions that they, and another Pirton man George Thompson, had all met earlier that day and notes Arthur’s Regiment was the Royal Sussex. He was not with John at the time of his death, but other Pirton men were, George Roberts who was injured and Arthur Walker who was wounded so seriously that he died later.
Arthur must have seen action with the Hertfordshires, probably in Belgium and France, and he would have shared the experiences described in other chapters with the Pirton men of that Regiment. Here, as we know that he was with the Royal Sussex from September 1916, seems an appropriate date to record his experience with them. On the 10th when he had met John Parsell, the war diary records that the Battalion was in the Beaumont Hamel sector of Bertrancourt. They relieved the 1/5th Gloucesters in the trenches, leaving “C” Company in support and “D” Company in reserve. Arthur may have met John on the way to the trenches or while waiting in support or reserve.
During September they moved locally in the area of the Somme between the Beaumont Hamel sector, Mailly-Maillet and Redan Ridge, sometimes in the trenches, but often providing working parties to improve drainage or lay duck boarding, with the obvious inference that it was very wet and muddy. They experienced danger from artillery shelling and trench mortars and sometimes continuous bombardments. An interesting entry on the 30th reflects other, more widespread concerns elsewhere, over the quality of the shells being supplied to the British artillery - ’22 shells were fired, 15 of which failed to explode’; examples of the latter are still being found in French and Belgian fields today.
The first part of October was much the same as September, until the middle of the month when they relieved the trenches and other battalions involved in the capture of the German stronghold, the Schwaben Redoubt. On the 17th they began preparations for an attack of their own on Stuff Trench. On the 21st, along with the 11th Royal Sussex, they attacked in three waves along a 250 yard front. For the most part the resistance was light - ‘In the main not much opposition’ - nevertheless the 11th Battalion suffered considerably but took the trench and held it. The next day the 13th Battalion recorded their losses and although recording ‘not much opposition’, they had 3 officers wounded and in the other ranks 25 men killed, 71 wounded and 30 men were missing. The diary comments, ‘Our losses were not unduly heavy’.
At the end of the month the entire Battalion was withdrawn to dig new reserve trenches, and for the early part of November, with the weather deteriorating with heavy rain. Most of their time was spent in working parties, sometimes of up to 250 men. The work included the salvage of any useful material from the old battlefields and burying the dead from earlier battles. The weather began to improve, new drafts arrived replacing the Battalion’s losses, and preparations began for a new attack. This would later become known as the Battle of the Ancre.
On the evening of November 12th they assembled and everything was in place by 3:00am for the attack. At zero hour, plus four minutes (5:49am), in thick mist and deep mud, they captured their first objective, with little opposition, apart from a small party of German machine gunners and snipers in No Man’s Land. Again casualties were considered ‘slight’, although a volunteer party from “A” Company were recorded as doing excellent work recovering twenty-seven men. The Royal Sussex considered that the battle was a great success ‘one of the most successful attacks of the “Great Push” and was a fitting conclusion to the operations of the 39th Division on the Somme’ and the Battalion was withdrawn to billets in Warloy.
In fact, while the 13th Royal Sussex may have been successful, the final objectives of the overall battle were not achieved. The conditions had been appalling, the battleground was very wet with deep mud and, with more winter rains arriving, further offensive action was called off. This was the last major battle of the Somme during 1916. They had started with the terrible losses on July 1st (60,000 British Casualties) and the total British and Commonwealth casualties for this period were calculated as 419,654 (dead, wounded and missing); French losses as 204,253 and German casualties at between 437,000 to 680,000 – in total somewhere between 1 million and 1.3 million men.
Between November 15th and the 18th they moved from France to Poperinge in Belgium and entered an extended period of rest and training, only returning to the forward area on December 11th. They went first to the dug-outs in the Canal Bank, north of Ypres and then in the Turco Farm sector, also north of Ypres. They noted the front line ‘being to all intents and purposes non-existent and badly waterlogged.’ They spent the period up to Christmas in the front line, but were lucky to have Christmas Day away from the Front and then several days of training.
For the first four months of 1917 they remained in Belgium playing their part in the defence of Ypres and preventing the Germans breaking through to the coast and the allied supply ports. They rotated in, out and around the trenches of Ypres, Poperinge, Zillebeke and Hooge. They experienced periods of constant shelling by the enemy, gas attacks, terrible conditions in the trenches, watched aircraft fight in the skies above and, although not detailed in the war diary, they must have received very significant numbers of casualties. It must have been to the Battalion’s great relief that they were withdrawn to northern France and away from the front line for almost all of May.
They returned to Belgium in June, to much improved weather and, although still out of the trenches, were welcomed with a gas attack at 11:00pm, which forced them to wear gas helmets until 3:00am the following morning. They were back in the trenches, and on the 10th the war diary records that since they had returned to the front line, 2 men had been killed, 2 died of wounds and 27 were wounded.
War diaries rarely go into detail of how men became casualties, particularly in the case of other ranks, but unusually the entry for June 13th gives a description which would have been fairly typical and Arthur is likely to have experienced similar events, even if not this particular one. Captain A C Taylor was leading his working party back after a night’s work, a shell burst in front of him, he lost the lower half of his right leg and doctors confirmed that had they been slower in getting him in, he would have died from loss of blood. The total losses between June 2nd and the 24th were given as 1 officer died of wounds, 1 officer wounded, 11 other ranks killed, 6 died of wounds and 85 more were wounded – about eight or nine a day and probably not considered to be too bad. They were again withdrawn to France for another extended period away from the Front.
On July 22nd they returned and were back in the dugouts at Canal Bank for the British attack launched on the 31st, which became known as the Third Battle of Ypres, and which lasted until November 6th, 1917. Arthur and the 13th Royal Sussex fought in this and one of its first major battles - the Battle of the Pilckem Ridge, which was fought between July 31st to August 2nd. Their casualties for those three days were 14 officers and 250 other ranks. It is likely that it was during this battle that Arthur was wounded for the second time. This time in the leg and in November he was home on leave, probably as part of his recovery. He rejoined his Battalion some time in December, but would have had to catch up with them as they had moved from Belgium to France and were at Coulomby, away from the fighting between the 11th to the 29th before returning yet again to Belgium.
Following training at the beginning of January 1918, the Battalion moved to Hilltop Farm, taking over the camp from the 1st Hertfordshire Regiment. They formed working parties and undertook carrying duties between the 7th and 14th. On the 15th the Battalion moved to relieve the Cheshires. The weather was atrocious with gales and rain storms. The war diary records that they had ‘Great difficulty in reaching front line posts, owing to the PADDEBEEK (a stream in Belgium near Passchendaele) being flooded. Men swept off feet. Arrived drenched through. Posts over knee-deep in mud and water.’ They completed the relief at 4:00am on the 16th and stayed in the line in those awful conditions until relieved on the 18th. The following day was spent cleaning up and foot rubbing in an effort to avoid trench foot. They were back in the line on the 20th, but moved to their camp the following day for a period of baths, rest and training.
Between January 21st and February 1st the Battalion moved by route march and rail from Belgium to France and back to the Somme. The route was, Wieltje, Railhoek, Proven Héricourt, Sailly Laurette, Peronne, Haut Allaines and then to Church Camp, Heudicourt, where they took up position as reserve to the front line. It seems that the weather remained extremely wet as there are frequent entries in the Battalion diary of foot rubbing parades. From this position they provided working parties and improved trenches before moving into the front line on the 4th. Patrols were sent out and working parties continued to repair the damage to trenches that the recent awful weather and enemy action had caused.
Arthur died on February 26th, but the exact circumstances are not clear. For most of the month the Battalion continued with the established norm, taking turns in the front line trenches with the 1st Hertfordshire Regiment, working on the trenches, salvaging, sending out patrols, burying cables and foot rubbing parades. There is nothing in the diary to suggest any special event on the 26th, but that was the date Arthur died.
He was in the Transport Section so he may well have been away from the front line or was perhaps supplying it. In either case, he would still have been subject to the danger of enemy shelling or sniping. The newspaper reports his death with little detail. Having died on the 26th, a funeral was held two days later. It must have been a quiet period, and he must have been popular, because it was attended by his two serjeants, NCOs and twenty-one of his comrades. Serjeant J Watt sent the news to his parents. ‘A cross marks the spot.’ and he added ‘Everything that we could do was done for him; he was esteemed by us all.’ His Chaplain, Captain H Collinson sent his condolences and added that he ‘was killed bravely doing his duty.’ – which was probably of little comfort to his parents, brothers and sisters.
His body lies in the Fins New British Cemetery, situated in the Somme area of France and on the outskirts of the village of Sorel-le-Grand. The village can be seen to its right hand side, with other views over open beautiful rolling countryside.
It holds 1,289, First World War casualties - 208 remain unidentified and a further 276 foreign national casualties are also commemorated.
Arthur is also remembered on his brother Fred's headstone in St. Mary’s churchyard. Fred was the last Pirton man to die.
(*1) Jane (bapt 1881), James (b 1883), Martha (bapt 1885), Robert (b 1886), Nellie (b 1888), Frank (b 1890), William (b c1894), Arthur (b 1896, May 4th), John (b 1898, died at seventeen days), Frederick (b 1899) and Marjorie (b 1902).
Additional Information
Text from the book: The Pride of Pirton
Acknowledgments
The Pride of Pirton book – www.pirton.org.uk/prideofpirton Chris Ryan / Tony French / Jonty Wild
