Pte 38051 Leo Hobson

They had six children, one of whom died in infancy (Vincent, 1899). Leo had an older brother Edward Ronald, born in 1893, and younger siblings Mary Josephine 1898, Eileen Ann 1902/3, and Harold, 1905, all born in Sheffield. 

The 1901 census records the family living at 43 Hope Street, Sheffield.

Edward is 33 and is makes cabinet case covers of leather, Ann is 34 and is working in a silversmiths warehouse. The couple have three children – Edward aged 7, Leonard F. (sic) aged 4 and Mary aged 2. Also living with them is Edward’s widowed mother Alice aged 69 and working as a domestic servant.

Leo’s father died in 1908 in Sheffield, aged 40, and was buried in St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Cemetery. Some time after her husband’s death his widowed mother moved to Liverpool. 

The family are recorded in the 1911 census as living at 106 Eversley Street, Princes Park in Liverpool.

Ann is working as a silver polisher and has her mother Ellen Ahearn aged 72 living with her. Leo is 14 and working as a clerk for a cotton merchant and Harold who had been born in 1905 was at school. Josephine, 12, and Eileen, 8, are inmates in the Falkner Street R.C. Orphanage.

His elder brother Edward appears to have died in Manhattan in 1913, and his mother travelled to New York in July 1914, just three weeks before the outbreak of war.

Leo enlisted in Liverpool and was serving in the 20th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 38051 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917 during the Battle of Arras.

17th, 19th & 20th Battalion at the Battle of Arras 09th 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.

Leo now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France.

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

The Liverpool Echo on the 9th May 1917 reports in the list of casualties:

"Private Leo Hobson K.L.R. He resided with his mother at 106 Eversley St. Before joining the army he was employed by Messrs Elder, Dempster & Co."

His mother had now lost three of her four sons. She received his Army effects and a War Gratuity of £3.  The pension card, giving her address as 108 Eversley Street, shows that she was awarded a pension of 15/- a week from October 1917.  She afterwards spent some time in Sheffield, at 105 Eldon Street, but returned to Liverpool.

 

His sisters Mary Josephine and Eileen Ann emigrated to New South Wales in 1926, followed by their mother Ann in 1928, at the age of 57. His mother died in Sydney in 1949 aged 82.