Victor George Fleetwood Shrapnel

• Matriculated: Did not matriculate

• Born: 26 June 1897

• Died: 23 March 1918

• Regiment: East Surry Regiment

• Grave/Memorial: Pozières Memorial: Panels 44 and 45

Family background

b. 26 June 1897 as the elder son (two sons, one daughter) of Arthur Stanford Fleetwood (1866–1938) and Kate (“Kit”) Eliza Shrapnel (née Kerridge) (1870–1971) (m. 1896). At the time of the 1911 Census, the family was living at “Corrie”, 27 Wavertree Road, Streatham Hill, London SW2 (one servant).

Parents and antecedents

One of Shrapnel’s great-great-grandfathers was Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), the inventor of the shrapnel shell (1804), who was appointed Colonel Commandant of the Royal Artillery in 1827 and promoted Lieutenant-General in 1837.

There is some confusion over the General’s sons. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that the General had a daughter and two sons, the eldest son being Henry Needham Scrope Shrapnel (1812–96). Yet in his will the General refers to his three sons: Henry Needham Scrope Shrapnel, Zacharias Scrope Shrapnel (1813–58) and Harry Squires Shrapnel (c.1807–65) (Shrapnel’s great-grandfather). The discrepancy may be due to the ODNB only considering legitimate sons whereas the General acknowledged all his sons. The register for admissions to the Alfred Masonic Lodge in Oxford in 1831 includes Henry Squires Shrapnel aged 28, giving a date of birth of 1802/03, and his age on his marriage certificate to Elizabeth Croydon in 1857 is 49, giving a date of birth of 1807/08. The General married Esther Squires (1780–1852) at St Mary’s Church, Lambeth, in 1810, some years after the birth of Henry Squires Shrapnel, but the fact that he was recognized by his father, and that he had Squires as his second name, suggests that he was the son of Esther but was born before her marriage to the General. This is reinforced by the entry in the Register of Oxford University Alumni, which shows that he was at University College and matriculated at the age of 18 on 14 June 1828, AND was the first son of Henry.

Henry Squires Shrapnel married Susan Cary Brown (1809–33) at St Aldate’s Church in Oxford in January 1833, and their first son, Henry Scrope Shrapnel, was born in November of the same year, by which time Henry Squires was a Gentleman Commoner of Magdalen Hall. Susan died shortly after the birth. Henry Squires married Elizabeth Iggulden Mant (1814–86), daughter of Thomas Mant, MD (another of Shrapnel’s great-great-grandfathers) in June 1838. In 1841 Dr Mant was brought before the Insolvent Debtors’ Court, where it was explained that he had been arrested for debt in 1836 but had escaped to France for about two years. The eldest son from the marriage of Henry Squires and Elizabeth was Henry Fleetwood Keats Shrapnel (1839–1907), who was Shrapnel’s grandfather.

Henry Squires led a chequered life, as did his two brothers. They claimed that their financial difficulties were due to the General spending his own money on his military inventions, including the “Shrapnel shell”, and not being reimbursed by the Government despite numerous promises and petitions to Parliament and others. In 1835 Henry Squires, trading under the name of Shrapnel and Company, was gazetted as a bankrupt grocer. He was discharged in 1839, the year he became an Ensign in the West Kent Militia, being promoted to Lieutenant in 1852. But by 1855 he was an insolvent debtor languishing for a while in the Debtors’ Prison for London and Middlesex. In January 1856 he was brought before the Court for Relief of Insolvent Debtors and, as he does not seem to have been opposed by a creditor, he was discharged. In 1864, aged 54, he “PLEADED GUILTY to Feloniously marrying Ellen Kettle, his wife Elizabeth being alive”. In the marriage register he described himself as a widower and Officer in the Army. He was sentenced to 12 months’ confinement. This is confusing, since he married Elizabeth Croydon (1818–84) in 1857, and we have found no evidence to show that he had divorced Elizabeth Iggulden, née Mant, who lived until 1886. So it is not clear which of the Elizabeths is referred to in the proceedings. It is possible that this was his second bigamous marriage, the first having gone undetected. In November 1865, presumably after completing his sentence for bigamy, he was a Prisoner for Debt in Horsemonger Lane Gaol under the 1861 Bankruptcy Act, and he died later the same year, though not in gaol.

In 1861 his son Henry Fleetwood Keats Shrapnel married Elizabeth Mountain (1838–1909) in Newport, Monmouthshire. They had eight children including Shrapnel’s father, Arthur Fleetwood (as he was generally known). Henry Fleetwood was in 1875 the Manager of the South Australian Land Company, which had been set up in c.1832 to encourage settlement in South Australia. At the time of the 1881 Census he was an accountant living with his family in Lambeth. He is then lost for some years and there was even a letter in the Belfast News Letter of 1896 seeking missing heirs to “large windfalls”, which mentioned Fleetwood. There is evidence that Fleetwood moved to Canada in 1890 leaving his family behind. On 30 July 1890 he wrote to his uncle Henry Needham Scrope Shrapnel who had settled in Canada and was an Immigrant Agent for the Canadian Government, asking for a letter of recommendation to Sir Joseph Hickson, General Manager of the Grand Trunk Railway. He does not appear in a British Census of 1891 when Elizabeth (describing herself as wife) and all his children were still living in Lambeth, although they had moved house. By the time of the 1901 Census some of the children had left home, but Elizabeth and three children had moved house again in Lambeth. By this time Elizabeth referred to herself as a widow. She died in 1909. In 1890 Fleetwood is reported to have married Clara Jackson, an English woman, and they had at least three children. We have no record of this marriage, and if it did occur he seems to have been following his father in contracting a bigamous marriage. The three children were born in Canada but moved to New York State.

The most informative of the three, from the point of view of this discussion, is Winifred Shrapnel, who allows us to identify and learn something of her parents. On 14 April 1914 she married Robert Hamilton Pegler, both of Westfield in the county of Chautauqua in New York State. From her marriage certificate she was born in Montreal in 1890, the daughter of Fleetwood K. Shrapnel (born in Kent, England) and Clara (née Jackson) (born in England). A few months later her mother, Clara Shrapnel (a widow), was married to John Faucett in Chatauqua and her parents were given as Alfred Jackson (1823–98) (England) and Mary née Fryer (1821–1902) (England). But at the time of the 1900 US Census Winifred Shrapnel was living with her two brothers in a Church Charity Foundation in Buffalo, New York. There was no sign of Fleetwood or Clara. As Elizabeth described herself as a widow at the time of the 1901 Census, she had presumably lost contact with Fleetwood some time before and considered him to be dead. He was in fact still alive in 1901, and died in Buffalo, New York, in 1907.

In 1891 Shrapnel’s father, Arthur Stanford Fleetwood Shrapnel, was a Managing Clerk in a Limited Company. By 1911 he had become Company Secretary to a “ship and dog biscuit” manufacturer. His mother was the daughter of George Kerridge (1847–1920), in 1891 a boot maker but by 1911 a boot and shoe dealer of Camberwell with two servants.

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Hilda Muriel (1900–92), later Simpson after her marriage in 1926 to Sydney Edward Wyatt Simpson (1899–1975); marriage dissolved; then Horsley after her marriage in 1955 to Percy Henry Horsley (1887–1959);

(2) John Standford Kerridge (1907–62]); married (1931) Joan Elizabeth Lander (1909–89); one son.

Sydney Edward Wyatt Simpson was initially a Private in the 14th Battalion of the London Regiment but was later transferred to the 7th Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders.

Percy Henry Horsley was a sergeant in the Royal Wiltshire Regiment and was commissioned in the Royal Warwickshire regiment. He served in France, where he was captured in August 1918 and spent a short time in a German prisoner of war camp. He became a bookbinder and in 1939 he was manager of a bookbinding manufacturer.

In 1939 John Standford Kerridge Shrapnel was a bank clerk living in Croydon.

Education

Shrapnel attended Miss Sellar’s School, Leytonstone, London NE, from c.1903 to 1907 and then, like the somewhat younger A.O. Parsons, Wilson’s Grammar School, Camberwell, London SE (founded 1615), from 1907 to 1915, where he became Head Boy. When he was admitted to Wilson’s, his English, spelling and arithmetic were rated “fail”, and his reading was only rated “fairly good”. But his performance improved in every respect, and in 1912 he was made a Prefect and became a member of the First cricket XI. As it was soon apparent that he was an outstanding cricketer, with a particular gift as a fast bowler, he was made Captain of the First XI from 1913 to 1915, taking 114 wickets at an average of 6.17 runs per wicket in 1914 and 83 wickets at an average of 7.55 runs per wicket in 1915. In 1914/15 he played in the First football XI, was the Captain of Chess, a member of the Shooting VIII, and a very good athlete who broke the school record for the mile and the long jump in his final summer at school. “The Challenge Cup, bearing his name, was given by his father. It commemorates one of the greatest sportsmen (in every sense) who ever wore a Wilson cap.” In 1914, when he was only 17 years old, he was elected to an Exhibition in Natural Science at Magdalen – which, given his initial report cited above, says much for the quality of the teaching he had received at Wilson’s. Although he was a promising student, of whom the Oxford entrance examiners spoke very warmly, he did not matriculate. After Shrapnel’s death, the Headmaster of Wilson’s Grammar School, Mr T.H. Knight, wrote to his parents:

I feel that I must write to you, yet what can I say? All the brilliant future that lay in front of him gone, and you left to mourn his loss. The fact that his past has been so entirely honourable to him only makes things harder to bear, and the only consolation – if it is any consolation – is that he gave his life freely and ungrudgingly for the cause of England and freedom. All the masters join with me in expressing our most heartfelt sympathy with you in the loss of one of the best boys any parents of any school could have wished to have.

“My son was Captain (not Lieutenant/acting Captain) … please see this is put right, give one who gave his all at least his due”  (Letter from Shrapnel’s father to the War Office of 7 May 1918; WO339/43487).

War service

Because Shrapnel had been a member of his School’s Officers’ Training Corps (where he had risen to the rank of Lance-Corporal), he was gazetted Second Lieutenant on 22 September 1915 in the 10th (Second Reserve) Battalion (Territorial Force) of the East Surrey Regiment and probably joined it when it was stationed at Shoreham. After serving in Ireland at the time of the Easter riots, the Battalion moved back to Dover in May 1916 where, on 1 September 1916, it became the 30th (Training Reserve) Battalion in the 7th Reserve Brigade. Shrapnel had been with it throughout, and on 12 December 1916 he was promoted Acting Lieutenant and attached to the 8th (Service) Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. This Battalion had landed at Boulogne on 28 July 1915 and lost very heavily during the Battle of the Somme; its losses included O.G. Parry-Jones (29 September 1916) and P.A. Tillard (19 November 1916).

Shrapnel arrived in France on 22 February 1917 and six days later (28 February) joined 8th Battalion’s ‘A’ Company, when, as part of 55th Brigade, in the 18t (Eastern) Division, it was in the trenches near Miraumont, just to the east of Beaumont Hamel – by then a relatively quiet sector of the front. The Battalion stayed in this area until 22 March 1917, when it began to move by train to north-eastern France. On 26 March it arrived at Wittes Cohem, near Steenbecque, three miles south of Hazebrouck, where it trained until 20 April and where Shrapnel was promoted Temporary Lieutenant (17 April). It then marched southwards to billets at Lambres (21 April) and thence to billets at the village of Bours, where it arrived on 28 April. From here it travelled eastwards by train to Arras and then marched south-eastwards via Neuville Vitasse, on the Hindenburg Line, to the trenches opposite nearby Chérisy (1 May 1917).On 3 May the 8th Battalion took part in the attack by the 18th Division on Chérisy and reached its first objective with no great difficulty. It then pressed forward under a creeping barrage and nearly took the village before a counter-attack by the Germans forced it to withdraw, having lost 13 officers and 381 other ranks (ORs) killed, wounded or missing. On the night of 4/5 May the Battalion withdrew to Beaurains, on the south-eastern edge of Arras, and stayed there until 15 May when it went into camp near Boyelles, five miles to the south. It remained in this area, either in the trenches or training behind the lines, until 15 June 1917, when it pulled back c.17 miles south-westwards to the village of Coigneux, where it stayed in camp until 2 July before marching further westwards to Halloy and the town of Doullens (3 July).

On 4 July 1917 the Battalion travelled by train to the railhead in Belgium called Hopoutre, probably a corruption of “Hop Out Here”, that was located in the Ypres Salient between Lijssenthoek and Poperinghe. It arrived at Dickebusch Camp on 6 July and marched to a camp in the Château Segard area, probably near Zillebeke, where it stayed for ten days. On 16 July it went into the line during a period when the enemy were very active, and on 22 July the Battalion War Diary reads:

Patrols went out during the night under 2/Lts [Norman Lock] Riddett [1887–1917; killed in action on 12 October 1917] & Shrapnel, with the intention of examining the enemy wire, and defences, and if possible to secure identification. Valuable information regarding the condition of the enemy wire & front line trenches was obtained, but the enemy was not encountered, and no identifications obtained.

Shrapnel went out on a similar mission on the following night, this time with Second Lieutenant Frederick Albert Dawson (1898–1918; killed in action on 7 August 1918), and this time the enemy front line opposite the Battalion was found to be unoccupied. On 24 July the Battalion moved back to Devonshire Camp, somewhere in the Dickebusch area, and after two days’ rest it returned to the Sanctuary Wood sub-sector of the front line and then, on the following day, went into the Support Line, where it stayed for six days.

On 10 August 1917, three companies of the Battalion took part in the second phase of The Third Battle of Ypres (31 July–10 November 1917), the capture of Westhoek Ridge, three miles to the east of Ypres, by General Gough’s 5th Army. After suffering heavy casualties, the Battalion returned to the Dickebusch area on the following day, and rested near West Wippenhoek, south-west of Poperinghe and just inside Belgium, until 16 August. It then trained in various places behind the line until 10 October, permitting Shrapnel to go to England on leave from 28 August to 7 September, and on 27 October he was promoted Acting Captain and put in charge of ‘A’ Company: he was confirmed in this rank on 21 December 1917 after he had attended a Company Commanders’ course at Le Touquet that started on 7 November. He was also made the Regiment’s Sports Officer.

On 10 October, the day after the one-day-long phase of the Third Battle of Ypres that became known as the Battle of Poelcapelle, 55th Brigade was ordered to relieve 32nd Brigade in the front line near Poelcapelle, six miles north-east of Ypres. But the guides from 32nd Brigade did not arrive as they should have done; the way to the trenches was a sea of mud; and the 8th Battalion did not arrive at its appointed place, between Gloster Farm on the left and Terrier Farm on the right, until 04.00 hours on 11 October. Then, after midnight on 12 October, the one-day phase of the 3rd Battle of Ypres that became known as the First Battle of Passchendaele, the Battalion was shelled with mustard gas, and at 05.35 hours it attacked north-eastwards, towards two farms on a ridge known as Papa Farm and Hinton Farm, and a strongpoint called Meunier House that was on a rise to the left of those objectives. The attack was a failure for several reasons: the orders relating to it were changed at least twice during the 24 hours leading up to the attack, and because of the weather, the appalling state of the ground, and the lack of good communications, the orders did not always get through to the platoon commanders; there was a lack of accurate maps; the thick mud clogged the rifles and made the going extremely difficult for the ordinary infantrymen and almost impossible for men carrying heavy loads like Lewis Guns and extra ammunition; and the attacking troops were met by heavy rifle and machine-gun fire. So only a few isolated parties made any progress and most of them were captured. The débâcle cost the Battalion ten officers and 231 ORs killed, wounded or missing, but Shrapnel came through unscathed and was commended for having “rendered noteworthy service”. The last platoon to have been involved in the two recent actions made its way back to Canal Bank Baths, just to the east of Ypres, at 05.30 hours on 14 October, and the Battalion then withdrew to Dirty Bucket Camp, near Vlamertinghe, where it stayed for ten days.

After a short spell at Parroy Camp and Petworth Camp, near Proven, it moved to Émile Camp, near Boesinghe, just to the north-east of Ypres, where it stayed until 7 December performing fatigues. Consequently it missed the final stage of the Third Battle of Ypres that became known as the Second Battle of Passchendaele (26 October–10 November 1917). After a short spell in Brigade Reserve in the Canal Dugouts, not far from Boesinghe, the Battalion took up positions in the trenches at Turenne Crossing, a road junction on the outskirts of the Houthulst Forest near the River Brombeek, where it stayed from 10 to 14 December. As the front was fairly quiet, Shrapnel was given a second spell of leave in England from 3 to 16 December, and when he returned the Battalion was still doing stints in the same trenches, with rest periods behind the line in billets at Mentque, Privett, and ‘H’ Camp, near Boesinghe. Shrapnel’s captaincy was gazetted on 21 December 1917 and the Battalion’s situation continued unchanged until 31 January 1918, but on 8/9 January 1918 the Battalion lost 16 ORs killed, wounded or missing, when a raid on the German trenches provoked a counter-raid.

On 31 January 1918 the Battalion moved south-westwards to the area of Herzeele, just east of Wormhoudt in northern France, and it trained there until 8 February, when it travelled south-eastwards by train to Noyon, where it stayed for a week. On 15 February 1918 it marched c.12 miles due east, to Pierremande, where it effected repairs for a week, and it finally arrived at La Haute Tombelle Camp on 28 February 1918. On the night of 20/21 March 1918, the German artillery continuously shelled the British positions and reached a crescendo at 04.30 hours, at which point the Battalion was ordered to stand to in anticipation of an attack. At 12.30 hours on the morning of 21 March, the first day of Operation Michael, the Germans attacked in force westwards on a c.48-mile front. Shrapnel’s Battalion was ordered to an assembly position on the western outskirts of the village of Rémigny, nine miles south of St-Quentin, the Schwerpunkt of the German offensive, but orders then arrived to hold the Ly Fontaine–Gibecourt Switch Line, on the west of Ly Fontaine. The Battalion held this position as instructed until, at 21.30 hours, it was ordered to the north and east sides of Rémigny in order to cover units of the 53rd Brigade as they withdrew at 22.30 hours; it was then instructed to take up a rearguard position to the west of the Crozet Canal and rendezvous at Frières-Faillouël in readiness for the start of the withdrawal at midnight. The rendezvous was effected at 03.00 hours and by 08.00 hours the Battalion had taken up positions in the nearby woods at Hallet and Frières, where it spent a quiet day.

During the night of 22/23 March 1918, however, these positions were shelled very heavily and the Battalion took many casualties. So at 03.00 hours on 23 March it was ordered back to the bank of the Crozet Canal. But the shelling increased and at 07.00 hours, under the cover of a thick mist, the Germans attacked en masse with infantry and intense machine-gun fire, causing very heavy casualties in the 8th Battalion, especially among the officers. On the canal bank, ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies put up a very determined fight, but were handicapped by the fact that they had hardly finished relieving the 12th Entrenching Battalion before the enemy attack began and so knew little about their position. By 14.00 hours the Germans had advanced so far that its position was becoming untenable. So the Battalion’s Commanding Officer arranged with the CO of the 12th Entrenching Battalion to make a joint withdrawal to the line of the Frières-Faillouël–Viry-Nonreuil Road, which ran through the centre of the line and where a stand was made until 17.00 hours. As, by this time, the 8th Battalion was almost completely isolated and surrounded, it was pulled back to the south-western edge of Frières Wood, where another stand was made until 19.00 hours. Then, at 19.30 hours, the Battalion was withdrawn south-westwards through the village of Villequier-Aumont, where it dug in on the high ground on the village’s western outskirts until, at 21.00 hours, it and the rest of 55th Brigade were pulled back further in the same direction to Commenchon and Béthancourt-en-Vaux, where they arrived at 23.00 hours. From there the withdrawal continued southwards until the Battalion reached the village of Audignicourt, about eight miles away. Shrapnel and his Company were positioned on the railway embankment around nine miles south of St-Quentin and just west of the north–south St-Quentin Canal. During the initial German attack on the embankment en masse, Shrapnel, commanding ‘A’ Company, was killed in action by a machine-gun bullet in the head, aged 20.

All the other officers in the Company were killed in action as well, except for Lieutenant Alexander Revel Tod (1892–1918), who wrote a somewhat formulaic letter of condolence to Shrapnel’s parents and would be killed in action three weeks later – on 18 April. The report on the battle commented that Shrapnel “had commanded his Company with conspicuous ability and gallantry since the beginning of October 1917, especially at Poelcapelle on the 12 August 1917”, and a brother officer wrote to Shrapnel’s parents: “He was killed playing the game, like to the true sportsman he was. He commanded his men extraordinarily well at all times, and the high standard of his company reflected great credit on him”. Shrapnel’s CO wrote a long letter to his parents in which he described the circumstances of their son’s death as follows:

His Company had just taken over part of the our front line near Nennissis [recte Mennessis], when the enemy attacked his position. He and his men put up a great fight, but the odds against them were too heavy, and they were eventually overrun. Your son was killed by a bullet and died instantaneously. He was one of my best officers, and his death is a great loss to the battalion. I spent the greater part of the night before he was killed going round his company lines with him, and he was as cheerful as possible and full of enthusiasm, although he knew quite well that he might be heavily attacked at any moment. Owing to the fact that the spot where he was killed is now in the hands of the enemy, I regret that it was impossible to save any of his personal effects for you, but those that we have got will be forwarded at the earliest opportunity. Please accept my deepest sympathy with you in your loss of such a gallant son.

Shrapnel has no known grave and is commemorated on Panels 44 and 45 of the Pozières Memorial. He left £317 11s. 1d.

Bibliography

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

Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘Shrapnel, Henry (1761–1842)’, Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900), vol. 18, p. 163.

Joseph Foster (ed.), Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886, 4 vols (Oxford and London: Parker & Co., c.1888–91), iv: 1715–1886, p. 1,292.

‘Insolvent Debtors Court’, The Times, no. 17,740 (4 August 1841), p. 7.

Robert Gouger, ‘South Australian Land Company’ (letter), Morning Chronicle, no. 19, 681 (24 September 1832), p. 3.

[Anon.], ‘Police Intelligence (Southwark)’, Morning Post, no. 28,335 (8 October 1864), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘Captain Victor George Fleetwood Shrapnel’ [obituary], The Times, no. 41,764 (15 April 1918), p. 6.

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

Pearse, Daniell and Sloman (1916–57), iii (1917–19).

Archival sources: 

Henry Shrapnel England & Wales, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, 1384–1858, Will Registers 1842–1844, vol. 8, Quire no. 360.

Henry Squires Shrapnel, Criminal register (Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey), 24 October 1864, p. 144.

WO95/2050.

WO339/43487.

On-line sources:

John Sweetman, ‘Shrapnel, Henry (1761–1842)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

https://www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=shrapnel%2C+henry&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true (accessed 23 October 2019).

Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0), October 1864, trial of HENRY SQUIRES SHRAPNELL (54) (t18641024-1015): https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18641024-1015 (accessed 21 October 2019).