Name
Ronald Lee Pyman
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
03/05/1917
30
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Lieutenant
Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment)
15th Bn., attached 12th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
ARRAS MEMORIAL
Bay 7.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial,
St Mary's Church Roll of Honour (Book), Hitchin
Pre War
He had been educated at Dover College and Jesus College, Cambridge. He then went to Australia as Assistant Manager at the Imperial Oil Company in Melbourne. He returned to England because of the war and enlisted in the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps in order to qualify for a commission. He arrived there on the 5th August 1914, he was in ‘C’ Squadron and his Regimental Number was 966. He left a widow and one son. He was his parents' youngest son.
Wartime Service
At the time of his death he was in the 15th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, but attached to the 12th Battalion. The 12th Battalion was in the 54th Brigade of the 18th Division of the VII Corps of the Third Army in what came to be known as the Battle of the Scarpe.
On the day he was killed in action there was a British attack on Cherisy village and it was a prime example of an attack launched without proper preparation and irrespective of the number of lives it would cost. The initial problem was that although Officers and NCOs did know the plan of the operations, zero hour was put back to 3.45am and the attack began in the pitch dark, which was disastrous. The assaulting Battalions had no idea as to the lie of the land over which they were to attack, the enemy wire had not been cut and many were to die on that wire from machine-gun fire. Contact was lost with the flanks and by 10.15pm the survivors were back at their starting points. In the words of one 18th Division survivor "It was one bloody great balls-up". Fourteen officers and three hundred and four men were killed, wounded or missing in the debacle of that one day.
Ronald has no known grave, but is remembered on the Arras Memorial to the Missing in France.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines, Jonty Wild
