Pte 48288 Patrick Joseph Dunbar

• Age: 35
• From: Wexford
• 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.9

Patrick was born in Newtownbarry, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford on the 14th May 1881, the son of Martin Dunbar and his wife Margaret (nee Comerford), of Main Street, Ferns, Co. Wexford.

The 1911 Census records Patrick, aged 29, working as a barman and living as a boarder at 275 Crown Street, Liverpool in the household of grocer Honor Lawler aged 56, and her sister Marjory Lawler aged 61. Both ladies were born in Ferns, Co Wexford, so it is likely that the two ladies are relatives of Patrick.

His mother, Margaret, died on the 16th July 1916, aged 68, in Ferns. She was a publican's wife, and died of gastro enteritis, her son John was present at her death.

Patrick was conscripted around August 1916, and enlisted in Liverpool. He served in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 48288.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool) for the 17th, 19th & 20th Battalions at the Battle of Arras 09th April 1917

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.

Patrick was one of those other ranks killed in action.

Patrick 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.