Clement John Byron

• Matriculated: Did not matriculate

• Born: 23 November 1895

• Died: 10 January 1917

• Regiment: Honourable Artillery Company

• Grave/Memorial: Beaumont-Hamel British Cemetery: B.34

Family background

b. 23 November 1895 at 18, Warren Road, Upper Clapton, as the youngest son (by 13 years; of five children) of John Byron (1846–1936) and Clara Byron (née Kibbler) (1851–1932) (m. 1874). At the time of the 1891 Census, the family (with one servant) was living at 215, Evering Road, Hackney, London E5; it later moved to “Downlands”, Ringmer, East Sussex, but at the time of the 1901 and 1911 Censuses its principal home was “Wyefield”, 4, The Knoll, Beckenham, Kent (three servants).

 

“Of good ability, diligent and very attractive, good too at music and games, he could hardly have failed to do well at Oxford.”

 

Family and antecedents

Byron’s paternal grandfather John Byron (1805–88) was a master mariner; in 1852, for example, he captained the barque Aden from Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), to London, carrying mainly wool. In 1855 he commanded the barque Coromandel, with 289 immigrants for South Australia – there were four deaths and six births during the voyage. The Coromandel (700 tons) left Southampton on 20 September 1854 and arrived in Adelaide on 8 January 1855, a journey of 111 days.

Byron’s father was a ship owner and a partner in the shipping firm John T. Rennie, Son & Co., which largely traded with Natal, and he was a significant witness on behalf of ship owners at the Royal Commission on Shipping Rings in 1908. The family moved to Beckenham because from there it was easier for him to reach his office at 4, East India Avenue, London EC. The family was reasonably well-to-do and employed three servants; and a jobbing gardener later recalled that Byron’s father had a Sunbeam car parked in the garage, and that he was hired to mow the tennis court with a scythe.

Byron’s mother was the daughter of Richard Commander Kibbler (1820–1902), LRCP, Edinburgh 1866; MRCS England and LSA 1859. In December 1865 he became assistant-surgeon to the King’s Own Light Infantry Regiment of Tower Hamlets Militia. In 1885 as a Surgeon-Major of the 7^th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade (the Prince Consort’s Own) he resigned his commission but was permitted to retain his title and to wear his uniform (London Gazette, no. 25,454, 24 March 1885, p. 1,315). He then went into private practice in Hastings.

 

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Rosina (1876–1950);

(2) Sidney Hall (1877–1933); married (1922) Beatrice Bonner (1873–1961);

(3) Ethel Frances (1879–1974);

(4) Lewis Ambrose (b. 1882, d. 1981 in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa); married (1918) Marjorie Adeline Ryder (b. c.1896, probably died in South Africa); three daughters, one son.

Sidney Hall was a ship-broker, and in 1912 became a partner in John T. Rennie, Son and Co. He was admitted to the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), a Volunteer unit (later Territorial Forces), in 1896. He rose to the rank of Sergeant, but on 25 August 1914 was promoted Second Lieutenant (London Gazette, no. 28,879, 25 August 1914, p. 6,700) in the 1^st Battalion and landed at St Nazaire on 20 September 1914. He was promoted Lieutenant (temporary Captain) in the HAC (Infantry) on 1 November 1916 (London Gazette, no. 29,814, 3 November 1916, p. 10,736) and promoted Captain in April 1917 (London Gazette, no. 30,008, 3 April 1917, p. 3,217), and in August 1917 he was made a Railway Transport Officer (London Gazette, no. 30,352, 26 October 1917, p. 11,010). He left £23,933 in this country and £8,724 in South Africa (nearly £1,000,000 in 2005).

Lewis Ambrose emigrated to South Africa in 1901, where he worked at first in a shipping office. But he subsequently became a well-known solicitor in Durban, Natal, where he met his wife, who came from Congella, Natal. He took no part in the Second Boer War, but afterwards joined the Natal Mounted Rifles (Territorial Forces) and rose to the rank of Captain (Adjutant). In July 1916 he disembarked in Egypt to join the 1^st Battalion, the West Kent Yeomanry, who, together with the 1^st Battalion, the Royal East Kent Yeomanry, had arrived there from Gallipoli in February 1916. On 1 February the two Battalions were formally linked as the 10^th (Royal East Kent and West Kent Yeomanry) Battalion, The Buffs; they formed part of 230^th Brigade, in the 74^th Division. They landed in Marseilles on 7 May 1918 and stayed in France until the end of the war. After his demobilization, Lewis styled himself as “Major”.

Neither Rosina nor Ethel Frances appears to have married.

 

 

Education

Byron attended Clare House Preparatory School, Beckenham (cf. C.E.V. Cree), from c.1902 and then Orley Farm School, Harrow, before going to Harrow School from 1909 to April 1914, where he became a School Monitor. His housemaster, Mr W.G. Young, warmly recommended him to Magdalen, and after passing Responsions with Credit, he was accepted as a Commoner – but did not matriculate. President Warren wrote of him posthumously: “Of good ability, diligent and very attractive, good too at music and games [he was 6 foot and ¾ inch tall], he could hardly have failed to do well at Oxford.” In 1920 his mother produced a little book for family and friends entitled C.J.B.: In Memory and it included short essays and poems that Clement had produced from about the age of 16 onwards. These writings show that he had a lively sense of the possibly outrageous character of famous figures from the past, that painting was one of his favourite pastimes, and that he was very observant, especially of nature. His writing is characterized by a quirky sense of humour and scorn for the inefficiency of pen-pushers. By modern-day standards he held conservative views on gender issues, for in a four-page essay that he wrote in 1912 on ‘The Insurrection of Women’, he imagined the mayhem that would be caused by a riot of suffragettes, and ended: “Then, as is quite logical to all except the sane, Women will doubtless have the Vote.”

 

 

War service

As Byron had served four years in the Harrow (Junior) Officers’ Training Corps, obtained Certificate ‘A’, and reached the rank of Sergeant, he was considered relatively experienced in military skills and the exercise of command. So when his father sought President Warren’s advice about his son’s desire to delay his matriculation in order to join up, Warren suggested that he should come to Oxford and take the medical test with a view to applying for a commission. He did so, only to be told by the Adjutant that so many Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps members were doing likewise that he might not hear from the War Office for a month. But as Clement was anxious to “do his bit” for the war effort, his brother Sidney used his influence with the HAC and enabled him to enlist there as a Private on 8 September 1914, two months before Clement’s eighteenth birthday and six days after the Battalion had formed at Finsbury. On 18 September 1914 Sidney wrote to Warren: “I trust it may not be long before he is able to take up work at Magdalen under happier conditions.” Clement left an essay, entitled ‘The First Camp, 1914’, in which he described how, on 12 September, a thousand volunteers travelled by train to a camp, probably at Belhus Park, Aveley, Essex, where they became the 2^nd Battalion, the HAC. It transpired that only four of the 12 men who made up his section had done any soldiering – and one of these was Clement himself.

After its formation, the Battalion spent two years in England, mainly in the London suburbs, with two stints at the Tower of London. By virtue of his education, character and experience, Byron was rapidly promoted to Lance-Corporal (10 October 1914), then to Acting Corporal (9 December 1914), then to Acting Lance-Sergeant (26 December 1914), and then to Acting Sergeant (2 January–1 October 1915) in no. 3 (‘C’) Company. Byron enjoyed being a non-commissioned officer to such an extent that he twice declined a commission, but finally, when specially requested by his Colonel, he applied for a Territorial Commission on 7 September 1915 and was duly commissioned Second Lieutenant on 2 October 1915 at 7/6d. per day (London Gazette, no. 29,312, 1 October 1915, p. 9,656). He took special courses in bombing (grenade throwing) and the use of the new medium machine-gun known as the Lewis Gun, and became so proficient that he was for some time responsible for training recruits in the use of these weapons.

 C.J.B.: In Memory also contains 21 letters from Byron to his mother and one to his sister Rosina that were written between 1 October 1916 (when his Battalion left the Tower of London to entrain for France), and 8 January 1917 (two days before his death). Oddly enough, it seems that he did not receive a single letter from his brother Sidney during their time with the two battalions of the HAC that went abroad. Byron’s Battalion was meant to travel from Southampton to Le Havre on 1 October 1916 aboard the SS La Marguérite, a 1,579-ton paddle steamer ferry which had belonged to the Liverpool and North Wales Steamship Co. and which Byron described as “a dirty black boat”. But the Battalion was forced to wait because of a submarine threat, disembarked, and finally crossed the Channel on the night of 2/3 October. It spent the next two days in a rest camp before travelling by train for 18 hours on 6 October to “a very muddy rest camp” at Steenwerck, about four miles south-east of Bailleul in northern France just below the Belgian border.

On 9/10 October the Battalion was attached to the 22^nd Brigade, in the 7th Division, in the trenches near Ploegsteert Wood, about three miles to the north in the southern part of the Ypres Salient, for some basic instruction in the realities of trench warfare. On 10 October it received its steel helmets and gas boxes; on 11 October it returned to the trenches near Ploegsteert where it experienced shelling for the first time; and on 13 October, the Battalion suffered its first casualties from shellfire. The Battalion stayed in support in those trenches until 15 October; spent four days in a rest camp; returned to the trenches from 19 to 23 October; and then spent another four days out of line doing fatigues. By 22 October Byron was noting that the nights were already very cold and on 24 October he wrote home asking for potted meats and, specifically, home-made cake. Four more days in the trenches followed, and on 31 October the Battalion was withdrawn to billets nearby and then, on 3 November, having completed a total of 12 days in the trenches, was withdrawn to divisional reserve back in Steenwerck. Byron reassured his sister Rosina that he still had his stout walking stick (“Fido”) “who is longing to hit a Hun over the head”.

On 9 November 1916, the Battalion began a three-day route march to Moulle, just north-west of St-Omer, where it was allowed to rest for three days. But on 15 November it set out on an even longer route march, south-eastwards to the battlefields of the Somme, and arrived at Bertrancourt, seven miles north-west of Albert, on 23 November, Byron’s 21^st birthday, where it went into divisional reserve for six days. During this march, in a letter to his parents dated 17 November 1916, Byron wrote: “I note with surprise that you have been reading in the paper that conditions at the front are ‘awful’. I can assure you that that was probably written by some terrified fool who had fallen into a shell-hole and got his trousers wet.” From Bertrancourt the Battalion moved eastwards for six miles to the village of Beaumont Hamel, through an area that was utterly devastated by the shelling it had suffered since the start of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July. Beaumont Hamel was a strongly fortified defensive position which had finally been captured on 14/15 November 1916, and it fell to 22^nd Brigade to consolidate the area. This was no easy task for inexperienced troops since the village and trenches had been obliterated by shell-fire, rain had turned the ground into a morass, and the nights were becoming bitterly cold. The onset of the mid-winter rains worsened the situation as it was almost impossible for the men to move without finding themselves up to their waists in mud and water, and in a few places they were compelled to use dead bodies stuck fast in the quagmire as stepping stones. When the skies cleared, the temperature dropped to 12 degrees of frost. In short, it was a very miserable existence which Byron tried to underplay in all his letters home. But by 25 November he was prepared to concede that there were some (slight) difficulties and continued: “The roads and paths, which […] had become very difficult to traverse owing to the adhesive condition of the mud[,] have now improved in consequence of the mud being converted into a creamy liquid, which[,] although obnoxious, does not impede progress to any great extent.”

23 November 1916 found Byron and his Battalion still in reserve, “very muddy”, and four days later he wrote home about the diet of bully beef minced or stewed, or boiled with onions and turnips, or if a sardine could be purchased, that was made into “fish cake”. His Battalion went into the partly obliterated front-line trenches at Beaumont Hamel for the first time on 29 November, where it experienced shelling and sniping and lost eight men killed and 17 wounded, ten of whom were members of Byron’s ‘C’ Company.

By 12 December the Battalion was resting and Byron wrote to his mother of the “cold, mud, water, shells, bullets” that he had experienced, but assured her that he was “fit and well” and that a cake had reached him in the trenches. Two days later he explained that the recent experience had also included being “in a shell-hole in the front for 28 hours, sat down because of snipers and the mud” and that he had had to keep himself going with whisky and army rum “which gave me a mouth like a bird cage”. By then, ‘C’ Company had lost several more men, including two good Sergeants killed in action, and one of his stretcher bearers had been awarded the Military Medal, the Company’s first decoration. Because of the shortage of officers, Byron was put in command of the Company, and this involved a lot more “work” – moving about between its several sections, checking that food was reaching them, and ensuring that the men were improving their cover, looking after their feet, and maintaining their morale despite the wet and cold.

On 1 December 1916 the Battalion took over a whole sector of the front line measuring three-quarters of a mile, just in front of the rubble and stinking mud that had been Beaumont Hamel. The stint only lasted for two days, but the Battalion was overlooked from the high ground opposite, and although the men were able to deter enemy snipers by the accuracy of their own fire, the Germans regularly dropped medium and heavy shells onto the Battalion’s position at all hours of the day and night, earning the position the name of “Windy Corner”. From 3 to 5 December the Battalion was out of the front line, providing working parties for various fatigue duties, but it was back in the trenches from 5 to 8 December and taking a steady number of casualties because of the German shelling. On 7 December, one of its patrols captured a hapless German prisoner. On 11 December the Battalion was in reserve before spending 12 to 17 December in billets at Bertrancourt, and from 17 to 26 December it was back in the trenches and trying to make its situation more bearable by means of a complex system of inter-Company relief. During this period, on 19 December, Byron wrote home: “It has turned very cold and is now freezing hard, rendering the shell-torn ground treacherous and difficult to move about on.”

During the brief respites when the Battalion was in reserve, ‘C’ Company found itself very close behind the front line in a huge German bunker that was reached by a 56-step stairway, lit by electricity and immune from even heavy shells. Here, the men enjoyed the luxury of supplementing their usual diet of “quaker oats and cold meat” with hot soup that was made from an oxtail cube in water, a little mustard, half a spoon of sugar, and a dash of Worcester sauce. Although Byron made light of the hardships in his letters, they suggest that the extreme conditions were pushing even someone as young, strong and motivated as himself to the limits of endurance: “I have not shaved for three days, and am plastered from head to foot in yellow mud. As I begin to dry it falls off in large lumps. I have had no bath for weeks”; “I am often wet through for 4 or 5 days on end.” So he asked his family to send him additional socks and underclothes as “it is exceedingly difficult to get them washed” and even “if you get it washed, you can’t get it dried”. A vital part of Byron’s duty consisted in providing leadership by constantly visiting those men whose turn it was to be exposed, each hoping to survive the day’s shelling and sniping. This was a considerable task for any young officer and several of Byron’s letters home display a live awareness of which of his friends were “sticking it” and “doing simply splendidly” and which were succumbing to the terrible adversity. But despite the physical conditions and the daily toll of maimings and death (to which he hardly ever referred), Byron never fell sick or lost his sense of humour.

At dusk on Christmas Day 1916, Byron’s ‘C’ Company was ordered to relieve a Company of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment that was on the Battalion’s left. It was very difficult to find them in the dark across the featureless mud and under fire, but the relief was completed at 02.00 hours; and two days later, ‘C’ Company was itself relieved by the 2^nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment. The Battalion was then withdrawn to the rear for four days of clean-up, training and repair work on the region’s shattered roads, and on 28 December Byron wrote home: “Just completed another spell in the trenches. Conditions were a little worse than before owing to incessant rain with a little frost. We were in the line on Christmas Day. While there Major N[esham – Byron’s Company Commander] went sick. I am the sole survivor of the ‘C’ Company officers who left the Tower.” He then requested tins of soft roe, more potted meats, some almonds, and raisins or dates: “I am still keeping very fit although I seem to feel the cold more than ever.” On 1 January 1917 his Captain went on a course, and Byron, the only subaltern left, found himself in command of ‘C’ Company once more. But next day they were back in the deep German bunker and on 5 January the Battalion moved to Brigade reserve behind Beaumont Hamel, where it provided working parties for the constant repair and improvement of front-line and communication trenches and its Lewis Gunners practised on the ranges.

On 8 January 1917, the German shelling was particularly vigorous throughout the day and the Battalion War Diary records that one of the enemy shells burst on a ration party, wounding six men. On this day, too, Byron wrote his last letter home, a long one in which he described how he was living, the difficulties of obtaining palatable food, and everyone’s attempts to keep water out of the dug-out amidst incessant rain. But as three officers had arrived from London, Byron had been able to stand down as Company Commander. On 9 January 1917, Corporal Kemp was killed by shell-fire while in charge of another ration party, and on 10 January 1917 the War Diary recorded once again that the German “shelling was very persistent and heavy”. So, when Byron was emerging from his dug-out in the side of a sunken lane near Beaumont Hamel that had been fortified to serve as a trench, he was killed in action, aged 21, by a direct hit, together with Private Frederick Arthur Scott, aged 24, from Walthamstow. Five other men were seriously wounded and later that day ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies were relieved. His Colonel wrote:

It was an awful blow to all of us, for he was such a fine soldier, fearless and splendid – there was no better officer in the Battalion and I loved the boy, he was so calm, thorough, and reliable. I would not leave until I had got the dear boy away and buried in a cemetery close by. Bowes (a pioneer) and two men dug his grave under heavy fire and completed it after having to leave off three times for the bombardment. […] I have arranged for a Padre to read the service over him to-morrow, and his resting-place has a cross, but only a rough one. I will have a better one made and erected in a day or so. I loved the boy, he was so calm and thorough and reliable.

Byron is buried in Beaumont Hamel British Cemetery, Grave B.34, with the inscription: “Thou faithful unto death, I will give thee the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10 [adapted]). Private Scott is buried next to him in grave B.35. Byron left £498 16s. 11d.

 

 

Byron is commemorated on the War Memorial on the village green just opposite his former home in Ringmer, and also on the memorial board in the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, where his father had a lych-gate built in his memory in 1920. His family also claimed the original cross from his grave in France and had it set up in the churchyard there: it now hangs in the South or Springett Chapel of the Parish Church and is inscribed: “To the Glory of God and in Memory of Clement John Byron 2^nd Lieutenant H.A.C. killed in action in France 10^th January 1917 aged 21 years”.

In a letter to President Warren of 22 January 1917 in which he responded to Warren’s letter of condolence of 19 January, Byron’s father said:

 Our dear lad had developed into a man of fine physique & yet possessed a sweet loveable nature – he was the joy of his mother’s heart. We looked forward with such confidence to a successful career for him at the University, but alas – how our proudest hopes are being shattered by this terrible war!

And on the title page of C.J.B.: In Memory – itself, as she wrote in its brief introduction, “a labour of love which has gratified a loving and proud Mother” – a brief poem by Byron’s mother indicates how she and her family tried to come to terms with their loss:

 What did we hope for him we loved?

        Life full and fair, success, renown?

        Nay, greater fame can no man win

        Than life laid nobly down

   For England’s needs; a Soldier’s death:

  God giveth him – the Victor’s wreath!

 

 

Bibliography

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

Special acknowledgements:

 **Geoff Bridger, Valiant Hearts of Ringmer (Lewes: Ammonite Press, 1993), pp. 42–9.

*www.ringmer.info (click on “War Memorial”: the entry for Byron includes four fine photos).

 

Printed sources:

 [Anon.], ‘How Lieut. Byron was killed’, Sussex Agricultural Express, 26 January 1917, no. 8,021, p. 8.

 [Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’, The Oxford Magazine, 35, no. 9 (26 January 1917), p. 115.

Charles Ponsonby, West Kent (Q.O.) Yeomanry and 10^th Yeomanry Batt. The Buffs 1914–1919 (London: M. Andrew Melrose, 1920).

[Clara Byron (ed.)], C.J.B.: In Memory [privately printed memorial book] (Dulwich: Lydall & Son, [1920]). We are grateful to Geoff Bridger of Ringmer for allowing us access to the copy in his possession that Clara Byron gave to one of her sisters who lived next door to her at “Downlands”.

Harrow memorials, iv (1919), unpag.

Goold Walker (1930).

Godfrey Thomas Hurst, History of the Natal Mounted Rifles (Durban: Knox Publishing Co., 1935).

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 57, 60, 113, 176, 326.

 

Archival sources:

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 1.

MCA: PR 32/C 3/213-217 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to C.J. Byron [1914–17]).

WO95/1662.

WO374/11620.

 

On-line sources:

Group photo: Officers of 2^nd Battalion, HAC, available from www.lulu.com/content/560569.