John Atherton ("Jack" at home) Parnell Parnell

• Matriculated: 1913

• Born: 1 March 1895

• Died: 8 September 1916

• Regiment: Gloucestershire Regiment

• Grave/Memorial: Flatiron Copse Military Cemetery: I.F.59

Family background

b. 1 March 1895 at The Elms, Olweston, Gloucestershire, as the only child of Thomas Parnell Parnell, JP, MA (Oxon) (1857–1914), “a well-known Gloucestershire country gentleman and hunting man”, and his second wife Edith Mary Parnell Parnell (née Wooster) (1856–1952) (m. 1893). At the time of the 1901 Census the family was living at Elricksley House, Hamfellow, Beverley, Gloucestershire (six servants); and at the time of the 1911 census at Montcalm, Cliff Drive, Cranford Cliffs, Bournemouth (three servants); later at 1, Aubrey Rd, Kensington, London; Wickselme, Berkeley, Gloucestershire; and The Elms, Olweston, Gloucestershire.

 

Parents and antecedents

Parnell’s father was born Thomas Parnell Griffin, the son of John Griffin (c.1825–1892) a farmer in Kenn in Somerset, who died of concussion some two weeks after being thrown from his trap when it overturned. John Griffin’s wife was Brunetta Parnell (1834–1916), the daughter of John Atherton Parnell (1790–1857), a farmer of 400 acres in Portbury, Somerset, and sister of Thomas Parnell (1832–63). After his father’s death Thomas Parnell was head of the family but died without issue. He left his estate (c.£25,000) to his nephew Thomas Parnell Griffin on the understanding that “he take and use the surname Parnell in lieu of Griffin and bear the arms of Parnell only”). Queen Victoria graciously agreed this change of name (London Gazette, no. 24,526, 27 November 1877, p. 6,674). Thomas Parnell Parnell, educated at Clifton College and Christ Church, Oxford, was a wealthy landowner and became a Barrister-at-Law (Inner Temple). He died from the after-effects of an accident that happened in early December 1913 when he was out hunting with Lord Fitzhardinge’s Hounds. As with his father, nothing happened at first, but in early January 1914, “alarming symptoms of brain damage” began to appear and Parnell’s father lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered. He was a magistrate on the Berkeley Bench, a charity trustee, a Commissioner of Taxes, a member of the local Hospital Committee, and a Churchwarden of Berkeley.

Parnell’s mother was the daughter of William Wooster (1827–91), who in 1881 was Chief Clerk of the Bath Post Office, where he was editor of the ‘Post Office Bath Directory’. At the time of his death he was Postmaster of Dover. He too died from injuries received by being thrown from a trap, at a level crossing some four months previously. During World War One she was the Commandant of the Red Cross (Voluntary Aid Detachment), Hillfield Hospital, Bishop’s Palace, Gloucester.

 

Siblings and their families

Parnell’s half-sister was Cicely Mary Parnell (1887–1970), later Seth-Smith after her marriage in 1912 to Captain Hugh Garden (later Brigadier, DSO) Seth-Smith (1885–1958); two sons.

Hugh Garden, an officer in the Regular Army, became a distinguished administrator and Supply Officer.

Flight-Lieutenant John Garden Seth-Smith (1917–45), one of the sons of Cicely and Hugh Seth-Smith, was killed in action when the Firefly aircraft that he was test-flying crashed on Barnes Common on 13 October 1945.

 

Education

From c.1902 to 1908, i.e. during the eight years when its Headmaster was the Reverend Cyril Robert Carter (c.1863–1930; Fellow of Magdalen 1896–1902 and 1910–30, also Bursar during those last 20 years), Parnell was educated at Cordwalles Preparatory School, Maidenhead, Berkshire. The school, which was founded in Blackheath and moved to Maidenhead in 1873, was renamed St Piran’s School in 1919 and closed in 1949; cf. P.F.W. Studholme and J.F. Worsley. It was also known as the Reverend C.R. Carter’s Preparatory School. Then, from 1908 to 1913, he attended Winchester College, where he was a member of the gymnastics team. He matriculated at Magdalen as a Commoner on 14 October 1913, having passed Responsions in September 1913. He took an Additional Responsions Paper (Livy) in Hilary Term 1914, but sat no more examinations after that and left without taking a degree at the end of Trinity Term 1914 to join the Army. According to his obituary in Wykehamists who died in the War (Rendall et al.), “he was devoted to music and all forms of out-door life”, and according to a fellow officer who clearly came from Gloucestershire and knew the family well, Parnell “inherited the fearlessness and integrity of his father […] and the sweet disposition of his mother, and from being always a lovable boy he was developing an even more lovable manhood, when Death cut short his most promising career.”

 

“He was always so bright and unspoiled, so full of boyish affection and loyalty. He has died for all of us, for his country and the good cause of God’s Kingdom.”

 

War service

When war broke out, President Warren nominated Parnell, who had been a member of the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps for a year, for a University Commission, and he proceeded to the Royal Military College Sandhurst for one of its shortened courses. According to the obituarist cited above, this move wrought a profound change in Parnell: “from being a somewhat irresponsible Oxford ‘undergrad,’ he came into line marvellously soon with the rigid discipline demanded by the Army and eventually blossomed forth as the most officially precise and punctilious subaltern imaginable”. On 23 December 1914 he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 1^st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment (London Gazette, no. 29,434, 11 January 1915, p. 454), which had been serving in France since 13 August 1914 as part of the 3^rd Brigade, 1^st Division. On 12/13 October 1915, the Battalion lost ten officers killed, wounded and missing during the final phase of the Battle of Loos, when IV Corps attacked Hulluch, east of the Chalk Pit and west of Hulluch Road (see H.R. Russell). As part of this attack, the 3^rd Brigade was tasked with occupying the line of the Loos–La Bassée road between the Chalk Pit and the Vermelles–Hulluch road by creating a diversion using smoke bombs and rapid rifle fire. The Brigade accomplished this task so successfully that by dusk the 1^st Battalion had been saturated with high-explosive shells that had killed five officers and 50 other ranks (ORs).

Parnell landed in France on 24 October 1915, presumably as the replacement for one of the ten officers whom the 1^st Battalion had lost on 12/13 October, and joined ‘C’ Company three days later, when the Battalion was in billets at Aliouane and still commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel (later Brigadier, DSO) Alexander William Pagan (1878–1949). It spent the first three weeks of November resting in billets and training, and during this period, on 9 November, Parnell was promoted Lieutenant. From 19/20 November until 14 February, the Battalion was in the trenches near Philosophe, east of Vermelles, with periods out of the line in Mazingarbe, Noeux-les-Mines, Raimbert and Cauchy, and in January 1916 Parnell was granted one week’s home leave. From 15 to 23 February the Battalion was back in the trenches and then in billets in Brigade reserve at Les Brébis until 3 March, when it returned to the trenches, this time near the Double Crassier, a huge double slag-heap, where it reported heavy shelling at “our end” on 5 March. After a few days in reserve at Les Brébis, the Battalion was back in the trenches near the Double Crassier where, on 10 March, ‘A’ Coy was the object of particularly heavy shelling that cost it one man killed and two wounded. The same thing happened on 12 March, but this time a dug-out containing 22 men was blown in: six men were killed and it took the rest 22 hours to extricate themselves, thanks, in good measure, to the efforts inside the dug-out of Sergeant W. Drake. An officer, Lieutenant Durant, was also killed while in charge of a party digging down into the dug-out from the outside.

 

 

The Battalion spent most of the next three months alternating between the trenches, the reserve trenches, and billets near Loos, mainly in the Les Brébis area, and it was during this period that Parnell was granted two weeks’ home leave. On 25 March 1916 he was promoted Lieutenant (London Gazette, no. 30,009, 3 April 1917, p. 3,298. On 2 June the Battalion returned to the line in the Calonne Sector, and it stayed in this general area until 4 July, when it began to move southwards towards the Somme via Noeux-les-Mines (4 July), Bruay (5 July) and Chocques (6 July), and thence by train to Doullens (6 July), before route-marching in heavy rain to Beauval, Vignacourt and Franvillers, where it arrived on 9 July. It set off for Albert on 10| July, and after three days in Divisional Reserve moved east-north-eastwards to a position just west of the little village of Contalmaison, where it became involved in the Battle of Delville Wood that had begun on 15 July. At midnight on 16 July, ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies of Parnell’s Battalion, followed shortly afterwards by ‘A’ Company and Parnell’s ‘C’ Company at 100-yard intervals, attacked the Germans’ second and support lines in Delville Wood, immediately to the east of the village of Longueval, only to find that the Germans had not had the time to man their trenches’ parapets and had hurriedly left. Despite the pouring rain, Parnell’s Battalion captured all its objectives by 00.50 hours on 17 July and consolidated its position by 02.30 hours. But as its casualties were light and the Germans did not counter-attack until the afternoon of 18 July, the Battalion stayed where it was until it was withdrawn to Bécourt Wood on 19 July, and thence to billets in Albert on 20 July for four days’ rest. After two more days in the trenches, the Battalion moved to Millencourt via Bécourt and Albert, where it stayed in billets until 15 August, when it marched to Scott’s Redoubt in the trenches at Railway Copse, near High Wood. Although heavily shelled, it held what the Battalion War Diary would describe as “a line of shell holes” since the front line had been “entirely obliterated by shellfire”, until it was withdrawn to Bécourt Wood (29 July) and then Albert (31 July) for two days’ rest.

On 2 September 1916 the Battalion was moved to Quadrangle Trench (captured on 5 July), and thence, on 5 September, into the front line, in preparation for the series of attacks that would culminate in the Battle of Ginchy on 9 September. At 06.15 hours on 8 September 1916, Parnell’s Battalion, one of the two battalions from 3^rd Brigade, 1^st Division, that were ordered to secure the western half of High Wood (the Bois de Fourrousse), began to advance towards the wood’s south-western face, with ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies in the first line and ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies in the second line. According to Terry Norman (in The Hell They Called High Wood: The Somme 1916), the Battalion was “weak in number even before the attack”. Nevertheless, according to the Battalion War Diary, ‘A’ Company gained its objectives; but owing to its casualties, “many by our own guns”, and lack of reinforcements, could not hold them and had to withdraw to the captured German front line, whilst ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies, having found the enemy in a trench and driven them out, could not hold their position for similar reasons. The Diary does not tell us what happened to Parnell’s ‘C’ Company, but it seems that he, aged 21 and whom his Commanding Officer (CO) described as “a cheerful thruster”, was killed in action during the first phase of the attack when leading his platoon across the open ground where J.B. Hichens had met his end and H.D. Vernon had been wounded four days earlier. This had been during the attack on 15 July by the 16^th Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. The action cost Parnell’s Battalion 11 officers and 212 ORs killed, wounded and missing, and Norman tells us that after being reduced to three officers and 96 men, it withdrew after dark to its original line. High Wood would not be taken until 15 September.

After Parnell’s death, his CO wrote in a letter to his mother: “He was never happier than when he was ‘worrying the Boche’, he loved it, and I am sure he died as he wished to die – leading his platoon most gallantly across open ground until he was hit.” He was buried first at Quarry Cemetery, Bazentin-le-Petit, then in Flatiron Copse Military Cemetery, north of Mametz, in Grave I.F.59. The inscription reads: “The Eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms”. But the quotation, which is from Deuteronomy 33:27, then continues: “and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them”. President Warren wrote a letter of condolence to Parnell’s mother, and on 22 September 1916 she replied, saying that his “kind and warmly sympathetic letter about my darling boy has been a real help & comfort”.

 

 

Parnell is also commemorated by a plaque in the Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and it was here that a memorial service was held for him and another fallen officer, Captain Butler, VC, on Sunday 24 September 1916. The Dursley Gazette reported that the service was attended by the Berkeley Platoon of the Volunteer Training Corps, the Berkeley Boy Scouts, and 25 wounded soldiers from Hillfield Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital. The National Anthem was sung, also the hymns ‘Lead Kindly Light’ and ‘When our Heads are Bowed with Woe’, and before the service the choir sang ‘Now the Labourer’s Task is O’er’. The service was taken by the Acting Vicar of Berkeley, Reverend Canon S.C. Armour, DD (1839–1929), who gave the following address:

None of us, I am sure, can fail to be deeply touched by this service in which we are taking part. The occasion of it comes home to us most closely, appealing to our deepest sympathies and awakening fond personal remembrances. There is a tumult of feeling of which we cannot but be conscious – deep regret, heartfelt sorrow, as is only natural; yet the sorrow is akin to joy, perhaps even now is turning to joy, love, thankfulness, yes, and patriotic pride which recognises fearless devotion to duty and high sacrifice in the cause of right. It is a wonderfully uplifting relief from the petty trivialities, the shallow pretences, the paltry meanness, which we often encounter in our daily life – an inspiring revelation of higher things to contemplate the true self-sacrifice, the lofty ideals to which our poor human nature can sometimes attain in the noblest and best of its sons. The two young lives whose glorious fulfilment we contemplate to-day afford a signal instance of this. They are a striking refutation of that old familiar falsehood that “self-preservation is the first law of nature”. They knew better: and they chose the better and nobler part, walking in the footsteps of their Master and Lord. They followed the Divine law of self-sacrifice in the cause of righteousness and truth; and so their memory shall be ever green in our hearts and we shall hold their names in perpetual honour. And they are worthy to be commemorated together. Although there was a difference of a few years in age, there was a bond between them of association, of congenial tastes and mutual friendship. Both by birth or connexion were Berkeley men; both were trained at the same preparatory school; both were public school men; both, too, in the best sense of the word, were sportsmen, and thereby was developed the manliness of character which a right use of field sports seldom fails to produce. And both passed the consummation of life in doing their duty in the sight of God and man. Of Captain Butler I am not able to speak from direct personal knowledge; but his record as a soldier is brilliant and honourable in the highest degree. He was evidently a man of unfailing resource and dauntless courage. I will read a short synopsis of his career as given in The Times:- […] These were truly brilliant exploits, both worthy of the British soldier at his best. It is interesting, no doubt, to many in this district that Capt. Butler was a nephew of the late Lord Gifford – himself a bearer of the honour of the V.C. – and he was the grand-nephew of Lord Fitzhardinge.

Of Lieut. John Atherton Parnell Parnell – or rather, as we shall always love to call him, dear “Jack Parnell” – it is easier for me to speak. We have, most of us, known him from his childhood. We have noted with friendly eye his growth, as he advanced from his boyhood to the full stature and strength of his early manhood. We loved his frank, open-hearted countenance, his generous nature, his manly simplicity, his candour, his courage and truth. And it was those who knew him best that loved him most. He had the kindly courtesy of the true Christian gentleman, and the charity which “thinketh no evil”; for his own life was pure and upright, and clear of all foul stain. The expressions of sorrow and affection evoked by the news of his death, from friends of every age and degree, show a wonderful unanimity in their high admiration of his sterling worth. From masters at Winchester, from schoolfellows, from the President of Magdalen College, Oxford, from fellow-undergraduates, from brother officers, from the colonel of his battalion, the record is the same – that of a generous, brave and honourable soldier, a true Christian knight “without fear and without reproach”.

 You will be interested to hear one of two of these testimonies. The first I quote is from a short notice in The Morning Post:- […] When he went to the front in October of last year he was reported as being the most efficient officer that his unit had sent out to France for some time. A brother officer writes: “In the first-line trenches he rapidly endeared himself to all ranks, and the men almost idolised him. To know him was to love him: his fine upright character and sweet disposition were a pattern to any man.”

Another brother officer, who had been severely wounded, and had lost the sight of both eyes, says of him: “He was the truest and best of friends, a born fighter, with the courage of a lion, beloved alike by men and brother officers.”

The President of Magdalen College writes: “He was always so bright and unspoiled, so full of boyish affection and loyalty. He has died for all of us, for his country and the good cause of God’s Kingdom.”

 The last I shall quote is from his colonel. He says: “Your son will be a great loss to the regiment. He was one of our very best, and everyone was very fond of him. He was always absolutely fearless and always perfectly happy and cheerful, whatever happened. He will be difficult indeed to replace, as he was such a good leader. He was one of the best type of officer, who only thought of the regiment.”

 Well, brethren, there is no more to be said. Let us bow to the will of God. But surely we may well be proud of our two Berkeley heroes and give heartfelt thanks to God for their noble example and their self-sacrifice for the land of their birth. “They were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they are not divided.” May God grant to their souls the blessing of His eternal peace!

The choir sang ‘On the Resurrection Morning’, and after the Blessing Mr House (the organist) played ‘The Dead March’ in Saul, the congregation remaining standing.

Parnell left £9,768 2s. 10d.

 

Bibliography

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

 

Printed sources:

[Anon.] ‘Death of the Dover Postmaster’, Dover Express, no, 1,743 (20 November 1891), p. 5.

[Anon.] ‘Funeral of the late Mr John Griffin, Western Daily Press, no, 10,640 (15 July 1892), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘Death of Mr. T.P. Parnell: Result of an Accident’, Gloucestershire Echo, [no issue no.] (3 February 1914), p. 4.

[Anon.], ‘Unofficially Announced: John Atherton Parnell Parnell’ [brief announcement], The Morning Post, no. 45,032 (15 September 1916), p. 4.

One of the ‘Die-Hards’, ‘Lieut. J. A. Parnell Parnell Killed in Action’, Dursley Gazette (The Gazette), no. 1,969 (16 September 1916), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘The Late Captain Butler and Lieutenant Parnell: Memorial Service’, Dursley Gazette (The Gazette), no. 1,970 (23 September 1916), p. 3.

Capt. D. Baxter, ‘The Late Lt. J.A. Parnell Parnell’ [letter from CO to Parnell’s mother], Dursley Gazette (The Gazette), no. 1,970 (23 September 1916), p. 3; also in the Gloucester Journal, no. 10,121 (23 September 1916), p. 6.

Revd S.C. Armour, ‘Memorial Service at Berkeley’, Dursley Gazette (The Gazette), no. 1,970 (23 September 1916), p. 3.

[Anon.], ‘The Late Captain Butler and Lieutenant Parnell: Memorial Service’, Dursley Gazette (The Gazette), no. 1,971 (30 September 1916), p. 3.

[Anon.], ‘Lieutenant John Atherton Parnell Parnell’ [obituary], The Times, no. 41,318 (7 November 1916), p. 4.

[Anon.], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice: Short Notices: Magdalen College’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 35 (Extra Number) (10 November 1916), p. 17.

Rendall et al., iii (1921), p. 87 (photo).

Pagan (1951), pp. 49–119.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 24, 115.

McCarthy (1998), p. 97.

Norman (2009), pp. 202–12.

 

Archival sources:

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

MCA: PR 32/C/3/929-932 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to J.A.P. Parnell [1916]).

OUA: UR 2/1/82.

WO95/1278.

WO339/3560.