Pte 52241 Norman Hinchliffe

• Age: 23
• From: Crowden, Cheshire
• 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.4

Norman Hinchliffe was born in 1894 at Crowden, Cheshire, the son of Charlie Hinchliffe and his wife Mary Ellen (nee Whitely). Charlie and Mary Ellen were both born in Holmbridge in Yorkshire. Charlie had always lived with his unmarried mother Jane and his uncle Lewis. He is found in the 1881 census with them and his grandparents. Jane was working in a cotton mill and Lewis as a fettler in a woollen mill. Charlie was 8 years old.

By 1891 his mother Jane was the head of the household of herself, Lewis and Charlie who was now working in the cotton mills.

Charlie aged 19 married 23 year old Mary Ellen Whitely in June 1892 and their first child Ellen was born in 1893 in Holmbridge. Their first son Norman was born in 1894 when the couple had already moved to Crowden which was in Cheshire at the time, but was incorporated into Derbyshire in 1974.

The first census after Norman was born was in 1901. His father Charlie is working as a reservoir keeper and is a boarder in the household of another, older keeper at Tintwistle a few miles from Crowden – perhaps learning the trade? Norman and his grandmother, mother, and siblings are also living in Tintwistle, at a dwelling described as ‘The Hut’. His uncle is living next door on a farm, working as a labourer. Norman is 7 years old and has five siblings – Ellen aged 5, Charles 3, Frank 2, Alice 1 and Martha aged 2 months.

The 1911 Census shows Norman aged 17 still at the family home which is called Bleak House, Crowden, a house which still exists, on the edge of the reservoirs. He is living with his father Charlie, the reservoir keeper who is 38 years old, his mother Mary Ellen who is 43 and his uncle Lewis who is working as a labourer at the water works. Norman is 17 and working as a labourer in a stone quarry. Norman now has 11 siblings, living at home as well as Norman are (Charles)Victor aged 13, Frank 12, Martha Ann 10, Walter 8, George 7,Annie 6, Elsie 5 and Fred aged 2. All the children (except the eldest Ethel) had been born in Crowden. Ethel aged 18 and 15 year old Ellen were boarding with a widow in nearby Glossop and both working as weavers and 11 year old Alice was staying with an aunt and uncle in Yorkshire.

Norman originally served as Private 4975 in the Manchester Regiment and following a transfer was serving in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 52241 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917 aged 23.

17th, 19th & 20th Battalion served at the Battle of Arras 9th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19th King's on the right and the 20th King’s on the left. The 17th 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 19th 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 20th 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 21st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20th 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 89th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19th and 20th 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 10th April.

Of the 17th 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.

Norman was one of those referred to as killed in action and he now rests at St Martin-Calvaire British Cemetery, France.

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.

Norman’s younger brother Charles Victor served in the 1st/6th battalion Manchester Regiment as Private 352544. He was killed on 02nd September 1918 aged 21. He now rests at Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps, France.

Soldiers Effects to father Charlie, the Pensions of Norman and brother Charles went to mother Mary E.

Both brothers are commemorated on the Tintwistle Cross, Village Green, Old Road, Tintwistle, High Peak, Derbyshire.

Their mother died in 1936, aged 69, and their father in 1941, aged 68.

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