Samuel Albert Pearce

At the foot of Shotesham War Memorial

 

Samuel A Pearce………………………………………..

 

Remembrance Cross – Samuel Albert Pearce

 

Most likely on CWGC would initially appear to be an Australian soldier who is the only Samuel Albert Albert listed:

CWGC: www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/606490/PEARCE,%20SAMU...

 

According to SDGW there is also an Acting Corporal G/15231 Samuel Pearce who was killed in action on the 21st October 1916 whilst serving with the 11th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment. Samuel was born Starston, Norfolk and enlisted Norwich. No place of residence is shown.

 

There is no additional information on CWGC

www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/808955/PEARCE,%20SAMUEL

 

No match on Picture Norfolk

 

The Australian soldier was born London and enlisted Blackboy Hill, Western Australia.

naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/Imagine.asp?B=8010549

 

His enlistment papers name his next of kin first as a Grandmother in Clerkenwell, London and then when his mother remarries, she is at an address in Stoke Newington, London. Its looking increasingly unlikely that this is our man.

 

For the Royal Sussex man, the Medal Index Card for Acting Corporal G/15231 Samuel Pearce, Royal Sussex Regiment, is held at the National Archive under reference WO 372/15/171768. Samuel had previously been Acting Corporal 2257 Norfolk Regiment.

discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D4570893

 

Baptism

 

The baptism of a Samuel Albert Pearce, born November 1886, took place at Saint Margaret, Starston, Norfolk on the 12th June 1887. Parents were Albert, a Labourer and Elizabeth. The family reside in Starston.

 

Other family baptisms in the same church.

Clara Alice…………….born 2nd December 1884…………baptised 24th May 1885

 

Census

 

On the 1891 census the 4 year old Samuel, born Starston, Norfolk, was recorded at a dwelling at Jays Green, Harleston, Norfolk. This was the household of his parents, Albert, (aged 28 and a Maltsters Labourer from Rushall, Norfolk) and Elizabeth, (aged 29 and born Rushall, Norfolk). As well as Samuel, their other children are:-

Walter………..aged 8…………….born Rushall

Clara………….aged 6…………….born Starston

Bessy………….aged 1……………born Harleston

 

By the time of the 1901 the family were recorded at Factory Cottages, Redenhall with Harleston. Father Albert, a Malster, is now recorded as born Gissing, Norfolk. Samuel is still at home and was now working as a Bricklayers Labourer. Also in the household is daughter “Bessie”, (shown as born Redenhall) plus another daughter, Eliza, aged 9 and born Redenhall.

 

Samuel had been married for 3 years by the time of the 1911 census. Working as a Bricklayer, he was recorded as the head of the household at a dwelling at The Common, Harleston, Norfolk. His wife was the 29, (possibly 23) year old May from Pulham Market, Norfolk. The couple have had just the one child so far, a 1 year old daughter, but Samuel’s handwriting makes it very difficult to work out what the first name is meant to be.The transcribers believe it might be Hilda.

 

On the 1901 census there is a 33 Louisa E E Pearce, born Shotesham and married, who was recorded as a live in Housekeeper at 8 Ethel Road, Norwich for a 51 year old Widower Robert Frost, a Builders Foreman from Norwich and his daughter. This is the only link between Shotesham and the Pearce family name that I could track down at this point.

 

Other family records

 

It may be a co-incidence, but the marriage of a Samuel Albert Pearce to a May Randall was recorded in the Depwade District of Norfolk in the October to December quarter of 1907.

 

Assuming we have identified the right marriage then it may be possible to identify additional children – from August 1911 onwards the General Registrars Office started to record mothers maiden name. Searching on the criteria family name Pearce, mothers maiden name Randall for the whole of England and Wales, produces an interesting cluster of possibles:-

Samuel B……………..Depwade District of Norfolk……..July to Deptember 1911 quarter

Thirza F………………Depwade District of Norfolk…….April to June 1913 quarter

Francis C……………..Henstead District of Norfolk……..April to June 1914 quarter

There is then a gap until 1927 with a birth in London which is probably therefore a different couple.

 

Henstead was quite a big district but it did include Shotesham.

 

Samuel is not remembered on the Harleston War Memorial so likely he wasn’t resident by the time war commenced, (or simply that there was no family member still resident locally who could nominate him for inclusion).

 

On the day

 

21st October 1916

 

From Edward Blundens “Undertones of War”

 

(Edward served with this battalion and his postwar memoirs are one of the classics on the subject.)

 

(Page 128). The clear autumn day was a mixed blessing for Harrison, who, in his determination to send over the companies to take Stuff Trench after as much "rest" as could be found in that Golgotha, had

arranged that they should advance from the reserve trench direct to the assault. And by way of novelty

the assault was to be made soon after noon; the men would therefore have to move forward in broad day

and over a sufficiently long approach—liable to the air's jealous eyes. Watches were synchronized and

reconsigned to the officers, the watch hands slipped round as they do at a dance or a prize distribution;

then all the anxiety came to a height and piercing extreme, and the companies moving in "artillery

formation"—groups presenting a kind of diamond diagram—passed by Harrison's headquarters in foul

Zollern Trench. He stood on the mound roof of his dugout, a sturdy, simple, and martial figure, calling

out to those as they went in terms of faith and love. Lapworth went by at the rear of his company, a

youth with curling golden hair and drawing-room manners, sweetly swinging his most subalternish cane

from its leather thong; and he was the last to go by.

 

Orders had been admirably obeyed; the waves extended, the artillery gave tongue at the exact moment. The barrage was heavy, but its uproar was diffused in this open region. Harrison had nothing to do but wait, and I with him, for I was acting as his right-hand man in this operation. News of the attack always seems to take years in reaching headquarters,and it almost always gets worse as it is supplemented. At last some messages, wildly scribbled,as may be imagined, but with a clearness of expression that may not be so readily imagined, came to Zollern Trench. One was from Doogan; Stuff Trench was taken, there were few men left,and he had "established bombing blocks." G. Salter had sent back some forty prisoners. A message was brought with some profanity by my old friend C. S.M. Lee, whose ripped shirt was bloody, and who could not frankly recommend Stuff Trench. The concrete emplacement halfway thither, looking so dangerous on the maps, had not been found dangerous,and the gunner's preparation there had been adequate; but, he said, we were being blown out of Stuff Trench. Should we be able to hold it ? We—ll, we was 'olding it when I got this; and so departed Lee, tall,blasphemous, and brave.

 

Looking about in the now hazier October light, I saw some German prisoners drifting along, and I

stopped them. One elderly gentleman had a jaw which seemed insecurely suspended; which I bound up with more will than skill, and obtained the deep reward of a look so fatherly and hopeful as seldom comes again; others, not wounded, sourly and hesitatingly observed my directions down the communication

trench. As they went, heavy German shells were searching thoroughly there, and I do not think they

ever got through. Their countrymen lay thick in these parts. Even the great shell hole which we hazardously used as a latrine was overlooked by the sprawling corpses of two of them.

 

Our regimental sergeant major was by this time in disgrace. This man, so swift in spirit and intelligence,

had lifted his water bottle too often in the business of getting the battalion into action; and he had not unreasonably filled the bottle with rum. In the horrid candlelight of the deep dugout he had endeavoured to keep going and with piteous resolution answered what he thought the substance of his colonel's questions; but it would not do, and Sergeant Ashford, the bright and clever signaller, took his place. Again

the night came on; and in the captured trench the remnant who had primed themselves with the spirituous hope of being relieved had to hear that no relief was yet forthcoming. Their experience was to be gauged from the fact that even the company held in support in our original front line, employed on incidental

tasks, was reported to be exhausted, and its commander appealed to Harrison for relief in ultimatory

terms.

 

Another day arrived, and the men in Stuff Trench had to eat their "iron rations," for we could not supply

them. We had also lost touch with our battalion doctor, who was somewhere toward Thiepval, that

slight protuberance on rising ground westward; and the bearers of the wounded had to find another way

out; yet, we were in possession of Stuff Trench, and the Australians southward held its continuation,

Regina. That evening, gloomy and vast, lit up with savage glares all around, a relieving battalion arrived,

one disposed to quarrel with us as readily as with the Germans. "Take the companies over to Stuff Trench," said Harrison to me, "and see them settled in there." Cassells came with me. We were

lucky, the night being black, to find our way through that unholy Schwaben Redoubt, but by this stage our

polarity sense was awakened and we knew how little to expect of local identifications. At last, after many

doubts, we had passed (in the darkness) a fragment of road metalling which assured me that all was right; the grumbling relief followed our slow steps, which we could not hasten even though one of many shells crashing into our neighbourhood caught a section of the incomers and the moaning cries might have distracted more seasoned tacticians

 

.It was Geoffrey Salter speaking out firmly in the darkness. Stuff Trench—this was Stuff Trench; three

feet deep, corpses under foot, corpses on the parapet. He told us, while still shell after shell slipped in

crescendo wailing into the vibrating ground, that his brother had been killed, and he had buried him;

Doogan had been wounded, gone downstairs into one of the dugout shafts after hours of sweat, and a shell had come downstairs to finish him; "and," says he,"you can get a marvellous view of Grandcourt from this trench. We've been looking at it all day. Where's these men? Let me put 'em into the posts. No, I'll see to it. That the sergeant major?"

 

(Page 133) If I was weary, what of Salter and his men? Still I hear their slouching feet on the footbridge over the Ancre by Aveluy, where a sad guard of trees dripping with the dankness of autumn had nothing to say but sempiternal syllables, of which we had our own interpretation. The shadows on the water were so profound and unnavigable that one felt them as the environment of a grief of gods, silent and bowed,

unvisitable by breeze or star; and then we were past, and soon asleep in the lee of Aveluy Wood.

 

The action at Stuff Trench on October 21st and 22d had been the first in which our battalion had

seized and held any of the German area, and the cost had been enormous; a certain amount of pride glowed among the survivors, but that natural vanity was held in check by the fact that we were not yet off

the battlefield.

archive.org/details/undertonesofwar00edmu

 

Saturday 21st October 1916. Day 113 (Battle of the Ancre Heights).

 

Thiepval

 

Zero Hour was set for 12.06pm but the Germans set the ball rolling at 5am with an attack on Schwaben Redoubt, still occupied by 39th Div. 17th King’s Royal Rifle Cops and 14th Hampshires drove the Germans back with grenades.

 

The division attacked at Zero with 116 Bde assaulting Stuff Trench with a company of 14th Hampshires on the left, 11th Royal Sussex in the centre and 13th Royal Sussex on the right. 117 Bde attacked the Pope’s Nose with 17th Sherwood Foresters and 16th Rifle Brigade with little success

forum.irishmilitaryonline.com/showthread.php?9058-The-Som...

 

Done