Pte 23434 John Mellon Hodgson

In 1891 the family are living at 70 Main Street, Millom.  His father, 41, is a joiner, his mother is 39. They have six children, John is 7.

 

His father died in 1894, aged 45.

 

The 1901 census finds his widowed mother, 48, as head of household at 78 Main Street, Millom, with five children at home.  Annie is 24, James, 19, is an electrician at the ironworks, John is 17, a fireman on a steam crane, Frances is 10, and Esther 9.

 

He married Lily Mary James at Middlesborough Register Office on 3rd April 1907. Lily was born in Guisborough, Yorkshire, in 1884.

 

John and Lily adopted a son, Alfred Firman, who was born in Saltburn, Yorkshire (5 miles from Guiseborough), to unmarried mother Florence Hanmer, and renamed him Arthur.  They had no children of their own.

 

On the 1911 Census John is 27 years old and is shown as married, his occupation is as a crane driver with a steel manufacturer. He is living at 22 Longford Street, Middlesborough with wife and their adopted son Arthur Firman Hodgson who was born on 27th July 1910. 1

 

His mother and youngest sister Esther are living at 51 Park Street, Kendal. Esther died in 1916, aged 24.

 

 He enlisted in Manchester on 20th November 1914. He originally served with the 11th  Reserve (Pioneer) Battalion. He gives his address as 9 Greenfield Terrace, Flixton, his age as 31 years and 1 month, and his occupation as crane driver.  He is described as being 5’ 5” tall, weighing 126 lbs, with a scar on each knee.  

 

The 11th (Service) Battalion was raised at Seaforth, Liverpool, on 23rd August 1914 as part of Kitchener's New Army, and joined the 14th (Light) Division.

 

He was sent to Seaforth on 21st November 1914, and to Farnham, Hampshire, on New Years Day 1915.  On 11th January 1915 they were converted to a Pioneer Battalion. 

 

Whilst at Watts(?) Common, Aldershot on 12th April 1915, he was confined to barracks for 3 days for overstaying his pass.

 

John shipped to France, disembarking on 19th May 1915. The battalion fought at Hooge, and in the second attack on Bellewaarde. 

 

 

His record shows Machine Gunner with the 11th Bn.

 

06/01/1916 admitted 44 Field Ambulance 

09/01/1916 admitted 4th Stationary Hospital, St. Omer, dental caries 

04/02/1916 discharged to duty

 

On 03/02/16 a telegramme was sent to his wife in Springfield Terrace, a notation states “gone”.

 

18/02/1916 awarded 7 days Field Punishment No.1 for being absent from billet.

 

28/02/1916 confined to barracks for 7 days for losing by neglect bully beef and 4 days’ C.B. for losing by neglect (…) helmet

 

31/7/1916 43 F.A. and 19 C.C.S. fever unknown origin

01/8/1916 admitted 7th Canadian General Hospital, Le Tréport 

06/8/1916 to 3rd Convalescent Depot, Le Tréport 

19/8/1916 discharged to base detail

18/9/1916 rejoined battalion in the field

 

Granted leave to U.K. from 27/11/1916 to 07/12/1916.

 

10/1/1917 to 43 F.A. ICT finger

13/1/1917 to 37 C.C.S.

14/1/1917 to 6th Stationary Hospital, Frévent

19/1/1917 to 4th General Hospital, Camiers

 

21/1/1917 evacuated to England on Hospital Ship Formosa

23/1/1917 admitted to the War Hospital, Huddersfield

13/2/1917 discharged from hospital 

 

He was briefly posted to the 3rd (Garrison) and 12th Bn K.L.R. whilst in the U.K.

 

On 01/5/1917 John returned to France, the battalion at that time in action at Arras.

 

He was posted to the 19th Bn K.L.R. on 12/10/1917.

 

John was granted leave to the U.K. from 02/3/1918 and rejoined from leave on 20th March.  The next day the German Spring Offensive began.

 

John was declared Missing between 22nd and 30th March 1918.

As Graham Maddocks points out in his book The Liverpool Pals, the CWGC records 38 men of the 19th Bn of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as killed in action on 30th March 1918 when as the Battalion diary below, shown in bold type, records that the men were actually out of the line and safely on the way to St Valery- sur- Somme.

The composite battalion moved off from ROUVREL at 8.30 am at 50 yards interval between companies, arriving at SALEUX at 3.20 pm where they entrained, detraining at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME the same night. The night was spent at ST. VALERY-SUR-SOMME.

Apart from those whose bodies were not found and are commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial all but two have burial sites at Savy British Cemetery, which itself is within a couple of miles of Roupy and contains most of the identified men killed on 22nd March 1918. Therefore, it would appear that the date of death for these men shown as 30th March 1918 is purely an arbitrary one and that they were in fact killed on 22nd March.

John is commemorated in Savy British Cemetery, France, where a Special Kipling Memorial reads:

“To the Memory of these 68 British Soldiers who were killed in action in March 1918 and buried at the time in the German Cemetery on the St. Quentin - Roupy Road, whose graves are now lost.”

Savy was taken by the 32nd Division on the 1st April 1917, after hard fighting, and Savy Wood on the 2nd. On the 21st March 1918 Savy and Roupy were successfully defended by the 30th Division, but the line was withdrawn after nightfall. The village and the wood were retaken on the 17th September 1918 by the 34th French Division, fighting on the right of the British IX Corps.

Savy British Cemetery was made in 1919, and the graves from the battlefields and from the following small cemeteries in the neighbourhood were concentrated into it.

There are now over 850, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, more than half are unidentified. Memorials are erected in the cemetery to 68 soldiers (chiefly of the 19th King's Liverpools and the 17th Manchesters), buried by the Germans in their cemetery on the St. Quentin-Roupy road, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.

The Cemetery covers an area of 2,555 square metres and is enclosed by a low rubble wall.

His sister (Frances?) Mrs. F.H. Thompson, 26 Athol Street, Barrow in Furness, wrote on 15th October 1918:

“Dear Sir, Could you kindly give me any information as regards my brother as it is now about 10 months since we heard from him. When last heard from he was in tailor’s(?) shop. His address then was Headquarters Coy. 19 King’s Liverpool Reg.”

 

Eighteen months after he went missing, on 31st October 1919 the War Office wrote to Infantry Records,

“With reference to No.23434 Private J. M. Hodgson, 19th Bn, King’s Liverpool Regiment, “2” Company, who was presumed to have died on or since 22nd-30th March, 1918, a report has now been received in this Office on Official German List D.67/14, also from the British Military Mission, Berlin, that Private Hodgson fell in March 1918 and was buried in a Collective Grave in St. Quentin-Roupy Cemetery, his disc being forwarded to the Central Office for Effects.  This disc has now been received."

 

This report now confirms the presumption that Private Hodgson fell in action on or since the date he became Missing, and has been accepted for official purposes. The next of kin should be informed, and your records completed accordingly, the date of death still remaining as on or since 22nd-30th March, 1918.”

 

 

Lily received his Army effects and a War Gratuity of £19-10s. The pension card, giving Lily’s address as 25 Albert Avenue, Urmston, Manchester, shows that she was awarded a pension of £1-0s-5d a week from December 1918 for herself and one child.

 

In 1919 Lily provided information on John’s living relatives:  she and adopted son Arthur Firman Hodgson were living at 25 Albert Street, Urmston.  She gave no information on his parents or siblings, “Relatives unknown to me”.

 

John is commemorated on Millom Civic Memorial