2nd Lt Clifford G Rust, RAF

I snapped the photo above when I met Clifford Goldsworthy Rust at his home in Chelmsford on the 11th September 1981.  As I now remark, twenty years later, to the day, two planes would smash into the twin towers in New York.  Back in 1981 though, I was keen to meet as many WW1 men as I could, and Mr Rust was one of four veterans who lived in the Keene Memorial Homes in Broomfield Road. He was immensely proud of the fact that he was one of Kitchener's first hundred thousand and, asked if I could take his photo, hurriedly found his trio and pinned them to his cardigan, standing to attention for me.  I'm afraid I chopped the top of his head off.

Clifford was born on the 16th October 1895.  He told me his place of birth was Hylands Park, Writtle and indeed, the 1901 census shows him as the five year old son of Uzziel Rust, estate bailiff of Southwoods Farm, Hylands, although his place of birth is recorded on the census as Margaretting, Essex.  Hylands was and still is a large estate, its boundaries touching Writtle and Widford and edging Margaretting and Highwoods.

The 1911 census shows Clifford living with his brother Uzziel, his sister Alice and her husband Joseph Corin Cohen at 183 Moulsham Street, Chelmsford.  Clifford is noted as a 15-year-old schoolboy, his place of birth recorded as "Hylands Widford Essex" although Hylands is scored through.

My notes from our meeting are very brief. He told me that he took part in the Second Battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915 and also went "over the top" on 1st July 1916.  Asked how he felt about that he stated, "We didn't know anything about it; you just didn't care."

Clifford's medal index card (above) fills in some gaps and also shows that he arrived in France too late for Second Ypres.  Of more interest though is a copy of his record of service which he gave me when I met him and which I reproduce below.  This shows his progression from a sapper with the Royal Engineers, appointment as lance-corporal,  promotion to corporal and then transfer to the Royal Flying Corps.  He was graded as flight cadet exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice and was commissioned in February 1919.  His service record presumably still survives at the National Archives or at the RAF museum in Hendon.

I only met Clifford Rust on that one occasion and see from a handwritten note that he died on the 18th June 1987 aged 91.

370713 Cpl Bill Howell, 8th London Regiment

I see from my notes that I interviewed Bill Howell at his home in Hanwell, West London, in November 1986 when he was then aged 92.  Back in 1914 he was working as a telegraph boy for the Post Office and here he describes the situation in August 1914.

"The balloon went up on 4th August 1914 and ninety per cent of postmen were reservists.  The only way you could get in as a postman in those days was through being a reservist or being a telegraph boy.  No civvies could get in.  Well the order came for all reservists to rejoin the colours immediately and out they went leaving the office empty bar eight of us telegraph boys.  So the old man said, "Well go on then, you've got to take all this stuff out.  Go and get wheelbarrows, stay out all night delivering it if you have to.  These men are going out to fight for you and your country."

"The eight of us got in a corner and we said, "well what about it?" We'd heard that the Post Office Rifles wanted two hundred to make up their full strength so we all marched out of the office and left him there swearing at us.  We marched up to Bunhill Row and the place was absolutely packed tight.  Everybody was on the streets and there was a corporal trying to make this two hundred up.  I thought I'd never get in.  He counted off twenty and he was marching them in when he saw me with a telegraph uniform on and my hand on my pouch and he thought I'd got a telegram in there.  He beckoned me over and I said, "tell them I want to join the 1st Battalion."  I didn't want no 2nd Battalion."

[Bill Howell refers to the 1/8th and the 2/8th Battalions here.  When Britain went to war in August 1914 the battalion was designated the 8th (City of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Post Office Rifles).  It only became the 1/8th Battalion in September 1914 when a second-line Territorial Force battalion, the 2/8th London Regiment, was formed.  Bill's original number, recorded on his medal index card, was 2518 and this number certainly dates to around the 8th or 9th September 1914 rather than the early days of August 1914 as might be implied from his narrative.  In Bill's defence, he was recalling events that had happened over seventy years earlier.]

"I goes in there, peels off my uniform and bungs it in the kit bag that was there and never sees it again. I goes over to the doctor and he said, "You're a very fit man, you are, but you want to put on a bit of weight and height.  Go and get measured." So I went over to the scales and got measured and the corporal said, "sorry son, you're half an inch under.  It's five foot two and you're only five foot one and a half." Well, he could see the tears in my eyes.  "Well", he said, "perhaps I made a mistake.  Get on again.  Now" he said, whispering because they were all watching you, "stand on tip-toe you bloody little fool." So I stood on tip-toe and got the extra half inch.  He said, "Now you're in" and that's how I got in.

"After two days a uniform came.  I went home in a shocking affair: a hat two sizes too big and an old coat.  I goes upstairs and there's my mother with the old corrugated washing tub.  She saw me and she said, "What are you doing here?  Who told you to come here?  Get out, I'll call the police."  I took my hat off and said, "it's me, your Willy."  She fainted.  After we got her round she said, " you go and get that shilling back."  I said, "I never had it, just this bit of paper.  It's no good, nothing can take me out."

Bill Howell died in July 1991 aged 96.  His account of the Battle of Loos is here.  I'll continue with some of his other recollections in future posts.

The photo above dates to 1977 and appears in Charles Messenger's book Terriers in the trenches: The Post Office Rifles at War 1914-1918. Bill Howell is seated third from left.  Chelsea Pensioner, ex sergeant Jim Nunn, seated to Bill's left, wears the MM & Bar.

370395 Pte Francis George Seddon, 8th London Regt

I interviewed Francis Seddon in November 1986 when he was then aged 89.  Born on the 11th June 1897, Francis - always known as Frank - had joined the 8th (City of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Post Office Rifles) one week before his 17th birthday on the 4th June 1914.  He was given the number 1959. Frank had left school at the age of 14 and taken a job as telegraph messenger for the Post Office. Born and bred in London's East End and still living in London, The Post Office Rifles was a logical choice.  As Frank told me, "I was young and active and full of adventure and I fancied the territorials.  There was no sign of war."  I'll let him take up the story in August 1914.

"We were on our way to camp, Eastbourne I think it was, and the train got as far as Three Bridges and stopped.  Then the rumours started going around.  The train shot us back to London Bridge where we detrained and marched to our barracks in Bunhill Row with a band playing.  When we got there we were paraded and lined up and our colonel addressed us.  His words were, "the ultimatum to Germany expired at midnight.  The Post Office Rifles will be mobilised." And a big cheer went up, I remember that.

"I was with several friends, all boy messengers, about half a dozen of us I suppose: Harfleet, Johnny Harris, Greig Haynes and some others I can't recall now.  We were all about the same age and we all came from the same office: West Central London. [1780 William A J Harfleet must have joined up in late January or early February 1914.  1816 John F Harris must have joined up in February 1914.  I have been unable to identify Greig Haynes].

"My parents were terribly worried about me going to fight.  In fact when I was at camp they came down to see me to see if I was alright.  I wasn't a bit worried though, I was enjoying it.  We were addressed by the Bishop of London and in his sermon he said, "I would not like to see England a German province."  Because at that stage it was a critical time and the Old Contemptibles were fighting for their existence in France.  They really wanted the territorials to volunteer and we got around the contract about home service by volunteering [to serve overseas].

First of all we occupied the basement of King Edward Building in the City of London and we occupied that for two weeks.  We was having kit inspections and getting our equipment ready and eventually we marched all the way down to East Grinstead and we set up a camp there.  That was our first stop.  After that we went to Abbots Langley and that's where the 1st Battalion went to France from.  I was too young though, even though I'd volunteered, and so I and a few others went to Cuckfield near Haywards Heath in Sussex. I was there four or five months and a nice billet it was.  I spent Christmas there and blow me, my mother and sister came down to see me, all that way.  They was more worried than I was.

"We eventually went out to France about May 1916 and all of us pre-war telegraph boys was together.  I spent my nineteenth birthday in the trenches and I got my bullet on the 7th October at the Battle of the Somme.  We had what they called a creeping barrage when we went over and in between the bursts there were German snipers picking us off one at a time.  That's how I got caught.  I crawled to our trenches, inch by inch, and a bloke who was in the trench helped me down.  I was taken to the nearest field hospital and was sent from there to another little town, Dijon I think.  I was there for about a week and then crossed the Channel in a hospital ship.  From there up to Bradford and we was heroes then; top VIPs.  Everything was laid on for us: travel, theatre, music halls, cigarettes; everything was laid on for us because they knew we'd given our lives in the trenches to save England.

"I was nearly twelve months recovering from that wound and I had electric treatment and all kinds of things.  Of course, the nerves had been severed in my leg which never really got well."

Frank eventually rejoined his battalion but never served overseas again.  Instead, he became a sergeant instructor, passing out at Aldershot and then helping to train up young eighteen-year old soldiers.  At 21 years old, Frank was now a seasoned veteran and he would later receive the Territorial Force War Medal along with the British War and Victory medals; a collectable trio by dint of being underage and having volunteered to serve overseas.

Writing to me in February 1987 after I had sent him a typescript of our interview, Frank wrote:

"Very interesting, however I want you to know that my main concern is what happens today.  I am half blind and half deaf caused by hospital treatment. Furthermore, during my treatment, I was evicted from my house and home by and Act of Parliament.  I had paid rent for 18 years but along with many ex-servicemen, evicted at the end of our war.  You probably do not remember that famous Lloyd George speech [where he said] we will make England a land fit for heroes to live in.  Being evicted was a deep down body blow.  I am now in the last few days of my life but my record still remains: Post Office Territorials 1914."

When he died in November 1990 at the age of 93, Frank Seddon was one of the last Post Office Rifles veterans of the First World War.

POR cap badge cut into chalk at Fovant courtesy of Panoramio.

25907 Dvr James Goodson, RFA

I interviewed James Goodson on the 5th November 1988 at the Royal Star & Garter Home in Richmond-upon-Thames. 

James was born in Bethnal Green, east London on the 26th December 1883.  He joined the Royal Field Artillery on the 24th August 1902, signing up for three years with the colours and nine on the reserve.  As he told me when I interviewed him, "When the First World War come, I had just twenty days to do on the reserve.  My reserve service would have finished on the 24th August and I wouldn't have been liable to go.  Instead, I was overseas in a few days."

James Goodson was a feisty character and didn't pull any punches during the few hours that I spent with him.  Yesterday, on Twitter, IWM_Centenary (The Imperial War Museum) noted that on the 24th November 1918, in a speech at Wolverhampton, Lloyd George had asked, "What is our task?  To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in." Seeing this, I was reminded of James Goodson's response when I had asked him whether he felt that Britain was a land fit for heroes.  This is what he said:

"When I finally left the army I went to my job where I'd been when I'd been called up, and the guvnor hadn't got time to give me a job.  So that was my thoughts about that: "well done my good and faithful hero, here's a ticket to the workhouse for you." That was my thoughts then and it was the thoughts of a good many more boys who come home. They come home to nothing, that was the tragedy of it.  That was the tragedy of the war as far as I was concerned.  Men pawned their medals directly they got them, so much so that the government had to bring out an order: "No more medals to be pawned."  So you know what they done?  Sewed them on a waistcoat and pawned the waistcoat.  That's how they got round that.  They was the heroes.  The country badly let them down.  Badly."

James Goodson served throughout the war and went into Germany with the Army of Occupation, finally returning home in 1920.  When I met him, he stood about five feet nothing in his socks, was as bright as a button, nobody's fool, and 104 years old.  He died In April 1990 aged 106.  The photo of James on his horse dates to around 1904.

200209 A/Cpl Archie Walter Parker, 4th Suffolk Regt

I never met Archie Parker, but I received several letters from him in 1987 and 1988 and the following extracts are taken from these.

"My name is Archie Walter Parker and I was born in Ipswich, Suffolk on the 20th September 1895. I joined the 4th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment in 1912. Our drill hall was at Ipswich so it was easy to go there from our homes. We used to go about two nights a week which was very handy. I joined them because they were only territorials and we had regular work to go to. I was in the local A Company and my number was 1630, later 200209.


[The 1911 census shows Archie living at 65 Rendlesham Road, Ipswich with his parents Albert William Parker (aged 43), Emma Parker (aged 40) and eight siblings. Millicent, at 21, was the eldest, whilst Arthur Wilfred Parker, at nine months, was the youngest. Fifteen-year-old Archie was working as a boot packer for a boot manufacturer.]

"In 1914 we went to Yarmouth for camp for a fortnight - as we thought - and then the war broke out so we had to come back to Ipswich to be mobilized at our drill hall. We went to Felixstowe, doing duty on the coast, and our billet was a large golf house from which the golfers had had to leave in a hurry, leaving a lot behind. We were then relieved and we went in the country to sleep in the fields. One was in Tiptree in Essex, near a strawberry field. Then we went to Colchester, having to march about ten miles to the Severalls Hospital which was then a lunatics' hospital. We slept in tents there and we had to run around the hospital twice before breakfast. We used to march down to Colchester and do sentry duty at an officers' billets and we used to go out to a village called Elmstead to train doing trench building and the like.

"One day our officers asked who would volunteer to go to Egypt, Malta or Gibralter. Many of us did and we ended up on an old cattle steamer at Southampton. We landed in Le Havre, France, and what a surprise! We could do nothing about it, there it was. We marched up a steep hill and went into tents where there were some troops who had been wounded. I met a soldier there who had been wounded and was from Ipswich, and afterwards both he and I worked for the same firm. Then we went by train to Rouen for about two nights, and then to St Omer. This was the British Headquarters where General Roberts died and my brother, who was a sergeant, went down to the station as a bearer.


[Archie's brother was 1100 Sergeant William George Parker, later 83371 CQMS Machine Gun Corps, and later still RQMS MGC]

9732 Pte Stan Brown, 1st Leics, later 32526 1st South Staffs

Stan Brown was the second Great War veteran I ever interviewed. I met him in 1981 and visited him many times until his death in 1987. A South Londoner, Stan had moved to my home town of Chelmsford in Essex and was an active member of the Chelmsford branch of The Old Contemptibles Association. He was also its youngest member and perhaps, not surprisingly, the last of that band to "fade away". Writing on behalf of the Chelmsford branch in the last ever issue of The Old Contemptible magazine, "the official organ of the Old Contemptible Association" in December 1975, Stan wrote,

"I am delighted to say we are going to carry on as a branch, after attending a full Area Committee meeting and finding the other branches with the Area are going to, we could not let them down and will soldier on. There are only six of us..."

Stan Brown was born David Stanley Brown in Dulwich on the 31st March 1897. I always knew him as Stan, and all of his surviving military records record him as Stanley Brown. Interestingly though, he signed off his editorial in the 1975 Old Contemptible magazine as DSB. He told me,

"I was christened David Stanley Brown but my mother never allowed me to be called David. As far as she was concerned, the name was like ditch water. I found out afterwards that my father's eldest brother was called David and he'd died in a bloomin' inebriate zone in Streatham."

On joining the army he told me,

"In 1913 I was apprenticed to a dentist. One day he accused me of making a false plate. I said I hadn't and I slung the thing at him. I knew I'd be in hot water so I ran away and slept on a park bench that night. I enlisted at Herne Hill the next day and became attached to the East Surreys."

A surviving entry in the Surrey Recruitment Registers notes that Stan joined the 4th (Extra Reserve) Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment at Kingston-on-Thames on the 16th May 1913. He would have been 16 years old, although he is recorded as being 17 years and 10 months. In Stan's words,

"I first joined the East Surrey militia [it would have been the militia before 1908 when it became the Special Reserve and Extra Reserve] after telling them I was eighteen. They didn't believe me but said if I stayed for four months they'd make me eighteen."

His papers note that he stood five feet, five and three quarter inches tall, weighed 116 pounds, had blue eyes and brown hair and a distinctive mole (which I personally don't recall). His trade was noted not as a dental technician but as an electrician's fitter, employed by W A Wilson of 150 Norwood Road, Norwood.

"When I joined the East Surreys," Stan explained, "the Commanding Officer asked if anyone liked gymnastics. Like a fool I said I did and I became the sparring partner for the battalion's boxing champion. This chap had a cauliflower ear and I must have clouted it because he whacked me about so much that he broke my nose and landed me up in hospital. The East Surrey Regiment had a bad reputation as a regiment and were known as the drunken half-hundred. After the boxer clouted me I think they were quite worried because he could have done me serious injury and I was still only young. Anyway, after the four months I joined the Leicesters as an eighteen year-old as my brother [Ewart Gladstone Brown] was already in the regiment and was well-liked."

Actually, as the records show, Stan's time with the East Surrey's amounted to a little over two months. He joined the Leicestershire Regiment on the 23rd July 1913 and was given the number 9732. His brother, who had joined the regiment in 1911 and would be invalided out of the army in 1915 with a bullet wound to his head, picked up at Neuve Chapelle, was 9302. Again, the Surrey Recruitment Registers noted Stan's particulars: eighteen years old (he was still only sixteen), five feet six inches tall, 119 pounds with a fresh complexion.

Fast forward a year and Stan is in France, having arrived with the 1st Battalion on the 9th September 1914. He was seventeen years and five months old and must have been one of the youngest soldiers of the BEF. His brother Ewart, (known to Stan as 'Glad) was serving with the 2nd Battalion in India and wouldn't arrive in France until December 1914. Therefore, although it was Glad who had seen more service with the Leicesters, it was Stan who would end up being the Old Contemptible.

"I saw fighting on the Aisne, in the caves on the heights above the Aisne. We went through a place called Vailley and we went three months without pay, cigarettes or anything else. By the time we got to Vailley our shoes had got holes and I remember Captain [W. C.] Wilson, my Company Commander, wearing a bloomin' sailor's overcoat and I was wearing a pair of German boots and a pair of short corduroy knickers. We never went out to France with our best uniform; that was supposed to be sent to Paris for when we got there. But we never got them and never found a bloke who had his either."

Stan also took part in the Christmas truce on Christmas Day 1914 when the battalion was at Chapelle Armentieres.

"At Christmas 1914 we had a kind of armistice if you like, to say there'd be no firing on Christmas Day, but it didn;t happen just like that. On Christmas Eve, as far as we were concerned, we was still at war, but in the evening on sentry-go we heard singing from Jerry. He was only fifty yards away and they was saxons to the best of my recollection. We had the Stand-To because we didn't know what all the singing was about to start off with. On Jerry's wire there were bits of paper, bits of rag, and all sorts of things saying "Happy Christmas", some in German, some in English because a lot of the Germans had worked in England. They held up a bottle of wine and I know our bloke shot at it. Well it all got quiet. I don't know if we had breakfast that morning, I suppose we did; we had a drink. Everything was peaceful and eventually one of the Germans held up a card with "Merry Christmas" written on it, and come on over the top.

"Everybody was dubious in our trench, saying kind of, should we or shouldn't we and all of this bloomin' caper, and then one or two more Germans come up. Then eventually we decided, well they haven't got any rifles on 'em and we went over. And our Buchanan-Dunlop who come to us as Battalion Commander, he kind of led the singing!

"We didn't all group in one place, we was spread along an area about a hundred yards and we mixed in with some others and they give us a bottle of wine and cigars and we thought to ourselves, well they must be bloomin' well-off in Jerry-land. All we got was a tin of Tickler's jam and we went back into the trench and brought out a couple or three tins of jam to give to these Jerries."

Lt Frederick Mason Matthews 2/1st Essex Yeomanry

Frederick Mason Matthews was one of the first Great War veterans I interviewed, and I see from my notes that I met him at his home in Great Dunmow in Essex on the 7th October 1981 when he was 90 years old. Frederick was born in the nearby village of Good Easter on the 27th March 1891 and had been a farmer before the outbreak of war.

The 1911 census shows Frederick living at home with his family at Falconer's Hall, Good Easter. The family comprised his father, mother, brother Reginald and two servants. Frederick and Reginald are noted as assistant farmers.


Falconer's Hall was a significant property and the family was almost certainly well-off. This modern-day photo from geograph.org gives a glimpse of the property viewed from Souther Cross Road:


Whilst this aerial shot courtesy of Google suggests that the immediate area appears to be little changed since Frederick and his family lived there:



My notes state Frederick's number with the Essex Yeomanry as 1818 but his MIC (top) shows that this number was in fact a Hertfordshire Yeomanry number. I had known that he was later an Acting Captain and the MIC confirms this. I presume a service record also survives but I have yet to investigate this.

I do know from my own research into regimental numbers that 1818 for the Hertfordshire Yeomanry dates to around the 3rd September 1914 and that, according to Frederick Matthews, he arrived at Southampton in October or November 1914. The MIC indicates that he arrived in Egypt on the 8th November and so he'd been in khaki for little over two months. Frederick remembers that,

"We arrived at Alexandria after twenty-four days' travel and from there we entrained for Cairo. On arrival there we marched to Abassia Barracks which were being occupied by regulars of the 3rd Dragoon Guards. We took over their horses and they went out to France."

Frederick Matthews served in Gallipoli, reaching Suvla Bay in August 1915:

"There were no landing places and the ship was brought as near to the shore as possible and we were told to wade in. The Turks were up in the hills and they could see our every movement. We hadn't been landed more than five minutes when we lost our colonel, shot through the head."


Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Gurney Sheppard DSO (above) died of wounds on the 21st August 1915 aged 50. He was educated at Eton and had been a member of the London Stock Exchange since 1887. He had won his DSO whilst serving with the Imperial Yeomanry in the Second South African War. He is buried in Green Hill Cemetery on Gallipoli.

"After the initial landing we went to a rest camp and then we were told at night to get ready to go up to the front line trenches and that someone would guide us up there. A chap turned up and we later discovered that he must have been a Turkish officer in disguise. He told our C.O. to follow him and we all landed up in Turkish trenches. Of course, when we discovered where we were we all got our as quick as possible and made our way back to our own lines.

"Later on we were sent up to the front line at Chocolate Hill and the troops who we relieved had been there for three weeks without a break. They were absolutely dead asleep at their posts and our first duty was to bury the dead bodies which lay in front of our wire and which had been there for some while. The heat was unbearable and of course the flies were terrible. It was not a nice job. There were some wells which had been sunk by the Turks long ago but they'd all been poisoned. There was no end of illness with people going sick with dysentry and enteric fever. I cam away with eneteric fever and dysentry in October 1915. I was a stretcher case and was sent to Aberdeen for convalescence for three months, followed by two months' sick leave. I then applied for and was given a commission [with the 2/1st Essex Yeomanry] in England."

Frederick Mason Matthews, who was immensely proud of the fact that he was the first person in Good Easter to volunteer during WW1, died in Chelmsford in December 1983 aged 92.