Fact file:
Matriculated: 1912
Born: 19 February 1894
Died: 25 September 1915
Regiment: Devonshire Regiment
Grave/Memorial: Loos Memorial: Panels 35 to 37
Family background
b. 19 February 1894 at 3, Orme Square, London W, as the elder son of Frank Carver (1865–1944) and Leila Carver (née Baring-Gould) (1869–1937) (m. 1893). By 12 March 1912 the family had moved from Orme Square to 24, Bedford Row, London WC; it later lived at 3, Westcliff, Bude, North Cornwall.
Parents and antecedents
Carver’s father was a cotton manufacturer and had been at Magdalen from 1884 to 1887, where he was awarded a 3rd in Jurisprudence. He was an exact contemporary of his future brother-in-law, Arthur [later Revd] Baring-Gould (1865–1955), who was also awarded a 3rd in Jurisprudence in 1887 (BA 1888; MA 1894). Baring-Gould was ordained deacon in 1895 and priest in 1896 and served as a clergyman in Devon (1895–1908) and then, from 1908, in Haverford West, Pembrokeshire (Sir Benfro), Wales.
Carver’s mother was a step-sister of the writer, folk-song collector and hymnographer the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), who is best remembered nowadays for his politically incorrect hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’.
Siblings and their families
Frank Maitland was the brother of John Edward Airey Carver (1899–1974), who married first (1921) Dorothea Mary Davis Jennings (1900 [Simla, India]–1945 [Cork, Ireland]), marriage dissolved c.1927; and then (1933, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia) Constance Mona[h] Squirl-Dawson (1914–94), marriage dissolved by decree nisi (1940).
John Edward became a Temporary Midshipman on 3 November 1917 and was demobilized on 5 January 1919 without seeing any action. He matriculated at Magdalen in 1919, got a half-Blue for polo, and was awarded a BA in Forestry in 1922. He subsequently became an Assistant Commissioner in the Imperial Forestry Service in Nyasaland and Mauritius.
John Edward’s first wife subsequently married (1929 [Bombay]) John Francis Lucy (1894 [Cork]–1962 [Cork]), four children; his second wife subsequently married (1941) Dr Edmund Frank Gleadow, FRCS (1910–87), two sons, one daughter. The second wife was a French-speaker and was employed as a secretary in the Ministry of Food from September to November 1939, after which she worked for SOE until 1941, when she left to join her new husband.
Education
Carver was educated at Mr Wilkinson’s Preparatory School, 10, Orme Square, London W, from 1902 to 1907 and then, from 1908 to 1912, at Wellington College, Berkshire, where he was a Scholar and “a fair cricketer although not in the College XI”. He matriculated as a Commoner at Magdalen on 15 October 1912, and was exempted from Responsions because he had an Oxford & Cambridge Certificate. He took the First Public Examination in Trinity Term 1913 and Hilary Term 1914, when he was awarded a 3rd in Classical Moderations, but he left without taking a degree to join the Army in summer 1914 even though his intention was to join the Civil Service. President Warren wrote of him posthumously:
Capable and diligent, […] no better specimen of a Magdalen Commoner could be found. His light and trim figure, his engaging mien, his courtesy, so natural and so simple, his intelligence and his modesty, his good sense and his high ideal of duty, all these things, of which it is now lawful to speak, made an impression, the depth of which only his removal could reveal, and his – as all his friends feel – is one more of the specially useful lives cut short by this devastating struggle.
Frank Maitland Carver
(Photo courtesy of Magdalen College, Oxford)
War service
Carver, who was 5 foot 8 inches tall and had spent two-and-a-half years in the Officers’ Training Corps (OTC) at Wellington College and two years in the Oxford University OTC, applied for a Temporary Commission on 14 August 1914. On 26 August 1914 he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in ‘A’ Company of the 8th (Service) Battalion, the Devonshire Regiment (formed at Exeter on 19 August 1914), and promoted Lieutenant on 5 February 1915. The Battalion trained in Hampshire until 25 July 1915, when it embarked at Southampton for France. After arriving in Le Havre on 26 July, it travelled by train to Wizernes, two miles south-west of St-Omer (28 July) and marched south-westwards for c.35 miles to Carvin, about 15 miles to the east of Béthune (4 August), where it became part of the 20th Infantry Brigade, in the 7th Division. Four days later, the 9th (Service) Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment was assigned to the same Brigade and Division, and the histories of the two Battalions then intertwined until September 1918 (see S.L.M. Mansel-Carey). On 17 August the 8th Battalion marched back westwards from Carvin to the village of Locon, just north of Béthune, and spent the period from 26 August to 9 September in the front line. At first they were in trenches south of the east–west La Bassée Canal and due east of Vermelles, opposite the Quarries with the east–west Vermelles–Hulluch Road (the D39) on its right, and then in trenches near Noyelles-lès-Vermelles, just to the west and five miles from the centre of Béthune. On 9 September, by when it had taken 13 casualties, the Battalion left the front line and rested near Vermelles until the evening of 24 September, when it returned to the trenches, on the left flank of 20th Brigade, with the Quarries to its right and the heavily fortified hillock known as the Hohenzollern Redoubt to its left. So at this juncture, Carver was less than a mile south of the slightly older G.B. Gilroy. When the Battle of Loos began on 25 September 1915 the Battalion was at the very forefront of the assault by 7th Division, with Carver’s ‘A’ Company in its second line. The Allied bombardment began at 05.50 hours and the attack began 40 minutes later, but the Battalion suffered heavy losses almost immediately, mainly due to withering machine-gun fire, and had soon lost all but two of its officers (who were wounded), including Carver who was killed in action by a shell, aged 21. Nevertheless, the Devonshires succeeding in taking Breslau Trench within 12 minutes; the German gunners in Gun Trench surrendered, enabling the 9th Battalion to capture four field guns; and the Quarries were taken before 10.00 hours. But the attack became bogged down in front of Cité St Élie, a mile to the east of the starting point, forcing the 150 survivors of the 8th Devonshires to withdraw to Gun Trench and spend the next three days there in support. When the 9th Battalion withdrew to billets in the village of Beuvry, at the north-east corner of Béthune on 29 September, it had lost 639 of its number killed, wounded and missing. Mansel-Carey landed in France on the same day and initially joined the 8th Battalion in early October, probably when it was resting, so never served with Carver, with whom he had overlapped at Magdalen 1913–14. Carver was first buried where he fell, together with his men, but now has no known grave. He is commemorated on Panels 35 to 37 of the Loos Memorial.
Bibliography
For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.
Printed sources:
[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 34, extra number (5 November 1915), p. 17.
Atkinson (1926), pp. 89–103.
Warner (2000), pp. 15–16.
Archival sources:
MCA: PR32/C/3/256-67 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to F.M. Carver [1912–15]).
MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 1.
OUA: UR 2/1/78.
ADM 337/125/406.
HS9/406/3.
WO95/1655.
WO339/11497.
