Arthur Oscar Parsons

• Matriculated: Did not matriculate

• Born: 12 March 1897

• Died: 26 March 1918

• Regiment: Durham Light Infantry

• Grave/Memorial: Saint-Hilaire Cemetery, Frévent: V.E.10

Family background

b. 12 March 1897 at his parents’ home at 123, Wells Street, Camberwell, London SE5, as the only child of Arthur George Parsons (1865–1935) and Fanny Maud[e] Parsons (née Bellamy) (1871–1959) (m. 1895). At the time of the 1901 Census, the family was living at 89, Choumert Road, London SE15 (no servants); ten years later it had moved to 160, Choumert Road (no servants); by mid-1915 it was living at 191, Albert (now Consort) Road, Peckham, London SE15, and by the early 1920s his parents had moved to 67, Harlescott Rd, Waverley Park, Peckham Rye, London SE15.

In the 1901 Census Parsons’s father, who was probably the son of a commercial traveller, described himself as a “gas and electrical engineer” and in the 1911 Census as a “builder and decorator”.

Parsons’s mother came from a slightly higher social stratum, being the daughter of a master plumber with his own small business.

 

“His death just upon reaching manhood’s estate was a terrible blow to us both, leaving us a childless home.” (Letter from Parson’s parents to President Warren)

 

Education

Parsons attended a private school from 1904 to 1911 and then, like the somewhat older V.G.F. Shrapnel, Wilson’s Grammar School, Camberwell, London SE, where he was considered the best Classics student that the school had ever produced. He took an intermediate BA from the University of London, achieving 2^nd class Honours in English, Latin and Greek when he was only 17. In March 1915 he was elected to an Exhibition in Classics at Magdalen, but then, on the advice of Christopher Cookson (1861–1948), Magdalen’s Senior Dean of Arts (Senior Tutor) from 1894 to 1919, he spent a final academic year (September 1915–July 1916) at St Paul’s School, Barnes, London SW, where Cookson had taught Classics from 1884 to 1894 before being elected a Fellow of Magdalen (1894–1919). According to his obituarist in The Pauline:

As he came late to the School he never became known to the majority of the boys, but in the Eighth Form he was very much liked indeed. He made extraordinarily rapid progress in Classics during his time here, and throughout was one of the best, perhaps the best, of the Upper VIII in English, showing a very wide knowledge and appreciation of literature and a capacity for discussing political questions with clear judgment and breadth of view. He would no doubt have made a name for himself later on.

Although Magdalen increased his Exhibition to a Demyship in 1916, Parsons decided to enlist on leaving St Paul’s, and on 12 February 1916 he attested and applied for a Short Service Commission on 12 February 1916, so did not matriculate. On his attestation form, he asked to be considered as an officer candidate for the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the London Rifle Brigade, both “pukka” Battalions, but someone in the military administration deleted both Regiments from the form, either because they did not consider Parsons’s social standing to be high enough or because Parsons had been in a Junior Officers’ Training Corps at St Paul’s School for a few months only.

 

War service

As Parsons’s military experience was so brief, he was also not permitted to proceed directly to an Officer Cadet Battalion. So on 13 February 1916 his application was approved and he was enrolled in the Army Reserve, but not mobilized for Home Service until 28 July 1916, i.e. after he had left school. But on 2 August 1916 he was sent with the rank of Lance-Corporal to the 2/9^th Battalion (Territorial Forces) of the Durham Light Infantry (DLI), possibly because of his height (5 foot 8 inches), and then nominally transferred on 6 November 1916 to the Regiment’s 1/5^th Battalion (TF), which had been in France since 14 April 1915 as part of 150^th Brigade, 50^th (Northumbrian) Division. On 28 April 1917 he began training to become an officer in No. 2 Officer Cadet Battalion, which was based at Cambridge, and he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 1/5^th Battalion of the DLI on 28 August 1917 (London Gazette, no. 30,292, 18 September 1917, p. 9,713). But when he landed in France on 19 October 1917 – when the 1/5^th Battalion was preparing for a stint in the trenches at Roussel Farm Camp, near Elverdinghe in the Ypres Salient – he was attached to the DLI’s 20^th (Wearside Pals) Battalion, in the 123^rd Brigade, 41^st Division, a unit that had seen much fighting in the Ypres Salient between early June and late September 1917, i.e. both before and during the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July–10 November 1917).

Parsons reported for duty on 27 October 1917, when the reconstituted 20^th Battalion was training at Bray Dunes on the northern French coast near the Belgian border (cf. D.H. Webb and E. Walling), with a full complement of 36 officers and 1,081 other ranks. The Battalion continued to train here until 14 November, when it entrained for the Italian front, and it crossed from France into Italy on the morning of 18 November to be welcomed with gifts of fruit, flowers and cigarettes. The 20^th Battalion then detrained at Genoa, on Italy’s north-western coast, and after eight days of marching across the northern Italian plain, it arrived on 29 November at the town of Giavera del Montello, about 25 miles north-west of Venice. On the following day it took over from the Italians in the strong line of defensive trenches that had been constructed along the nearby River Piave, one of Italy’s longest rivers that flows south-eastwards down from the Alps and into the Adriatic Sea just east of Venice. The Battalion held the line here, with rest periods in the village of Selva and Giavera itself until 20 January 1918, when the Division was withdrawn westwards to the village of Casa Amata, near the town of Castelfranco, where it rested and trained for a week. On 28 January the Division was moved back to Possagno, in reserve, and Parsons’s Battalion stayed in this general area, working, resting and training, until 26 February, when it moved to Camposampiero, to the south of the town of Castelfranco Veneto, having suffered not a single casualty since its arrival in the Veneto.

Back on the Western Front, however, the situation was starting to become critical as the Germans prepared for a major offensive known as Operation Michael, the aim of which was to advance westwards from the Hindenburg Line, drive a wedge between the 57 British and two Portuguese Divisions in the Front’s northern third and the 101 French and five American Divisions in the Front’s southern two-thirds, and push the British back into the sea round the north of Paris. Consequently, on 3 March 1918 Parsons’s Battalion entrained and arrived at Doullens four days later. From 7 to 17 March it trained near Ivergny, five miles north-north-east of Doullens, and then marched nine miles via Warluzel to Saulty, before being rushed by train to Achiet-le-Grand, 11 miles north-east of Albert, where it arrived at 02.00 hours on 22 March 1918, the second day of the German offensive. During the small hours of the same night the Battalion marched another three miles eastwards to the village of Favreuil and then a further four miles north-eastwards, to the small town of Vaulx-Vraucourt, where, at 08.00 hours, it was ordered to hold the Reserve line that was situated just behind the village. At about 17.00 hours on 22 March, the Division in front of the 20^th Battalion began to retire westwards, and at 08.00 hours on 23 March dense waves of Germans attacked the two right-hand companies of 20^th Battalion but were successfully resisted with rifle and machine-gun fire.

The Germans repeated their attacks during the course of the day, and although the Battalion was able to hold on, it was ordered to fall back at 17.00 hours on 24 March. Parsons was dangerously wounded during this action, and although his men were able to evacuate him, he was in a coma for 48 hours, never regained consciousness, and died, aged 21, on 26 March 1918 of wounds received in action, at No. 6 Stationary Hospital, Frévent, a good 30 miles to the west-north-west. He was buried in St Hilaire Cemetery, Frévent (west of Arras), in the extension with the French, in Grave V.E.10; it was inscribed: “Through strength to nobler ministry”. Meanwhile, his Battalion continued to withdraw westwards via Sapignies, Bihucourt, Bucquoy, Gommecourt, Bienvillers-au-Bois and Halloy until, on 1 April 1918, it reached Bonnières, between Doullens and Frévent, from where it was bussed northwards to Steenvoorde, in the Pas de Calais, to re-equip and reorganize. In a letter to Christopher Cookson of 29 June 1919, Parsons’s father recorded that on 23 September 1917, his son’s last day at home before he left to join his Battalion in France, he had written in his mother’s autograph book: “Dispose of me according to the Wisdom of Thy pleasure: Thy will be done though in my own undoing” (Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Part II, Section II, xv).

 

 

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

Printed sources:

Obituary notice, The Pauline, no. 239 (June 1919).

Denison Howard Allport and Norman J. Friskney, A Short History of Wilson’s School, 3^rd edn (Wilson’s School Charitable Trust, 1987), p. 197.

Sheen (2008).

 

Archival sources:

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 3.

MCA: PR32/C/3/943 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to A.O. Parsons).

WO95/2639/1.

WO95/2643.

WO95/2837/2.

WO95/2840.

WO95/4243.

WO374/52385.