The Casualty Brought in from The Cold

2384 Private John Moore, 1/5^th Battalion

Thomas William Moore, originally from Hunmanby, a Carriage Inspector, working in York’s Carriage Works for the North Eastern Railway Company, and his wife, Henrietta produced a large family of nine children. There were three sons and six daughters, of which, John was the second eldest.

The family lived at 18 Nunnery Lane, York, in the shadow of the City Walls, between Scarcroft Lane and Dale Street, on the same side of the road as St Thomas’s Hospital.

After leaving school, John Moore went to work, perhaps as an apprentice tin smith, although it is thought he did not complete his trade training, as by 1911, at the age of 18, he appears on the England Census as a soldier at the West Yorkshire Regiment Depot at the Infantry Barracks on Fulford Road. There is no record of which battalion he was sent to after training, but it is likely that it was the 1^st Battalion, which was based in Lichfield in Staffordshire. The 2^nd Battalion was performing garrison duties on the island of Malta.

By the outbreak of the Great War, John Moore had left the Army and returned to Nunnery Lane. He enlisted, on 7^th September 1914, into the West Yorkshire Regiment once again and was sent to the 5^th Battalion. It is further noted that he was sent to the ‘Imperial Service Section’, which must mean that upon enlistment he also signed the Imperial Service Declaration. In some battalions of the Territorial Force, it had become a locally enforced condition of enlistment that men volunteering to serve, must also be willing to be sent to fight overseas, which ordinarily was not a role the Territorial Force was liable to undertake. The ‘Imperial Service Section’, soon became a separate battalion and was designated as 1/5^th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment. Those men who had not signed their willingness to serve overseas, or those who were needed to form a trained nucleus on which to build a ‘reserve’ battalion were sent to the 2/5^th Battalion, although later in the war, this battalion too became liable for overseas service.

On his enlistment papers, he is described as a sheet iron worker. He also stated that he was married, although no further evidence of a marriage can be found. In all military documents, his father, Thomas Moore is provided as his next of kin. No doubt, through the battalion’s preparations for war before it deployed, John Moore’s previous recent Regular Army service would have been a great asset to his platoon, especially to the newly enlisted civilians who would have found military life unlike anything they had previously experienced. He was still a young man, and though he was an ex-Regular, he was unlikely to have behaved like some of his older colleagues who had joined as National Reserve soldiers, some of whom caused as many problems as their experience helped to assist with. One officer noted that some of the National Reserve men had expected to be restored to their former ranks, despite there not being vacancies for those ranks, and they had become insolent and attempted to take advantage of some of the younger less experienced officers.

On 15^th April 1915, John Moore landed at Boulogne, having left Folkestone aboard HMT Invicta, which was a requisitioned passenger ferry belonging to the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, and had operated the routes between Dover to Calais, and Folkestone to Boulogne taking day-trippers and holiday-makers away on their holidays. A modest, two funnelled ship, it would have been quite a cramped journey with around 1000 men aboard.

Within days, the battalion, along with the rest of the Brigade, and Division, moved to and concentrated in the area surrounding Merville and Estaires, where kit was reclaimed, sorted, cleaned and made ready to enable the men to take their place in the line and contribute to the war effort.

As with all newly arrived battalions, the unit was broken down to companies and attached in twenty-four hour rotations to other, more experienced battalions of the 7^th and 8^th Divisions to teach them the skills they would need when they deployed to the front-line trenches and held a part of the line in their own right. 

The battalion saw it’s first real action during the Battle of Aubers Ridge, when on 9^th May 1915, it was tasked with giving supporting fire from their trenches to troops of the 8^th Division who were attacking the German line. During this action, some of the men became casualties due their inexperience of trench warfare. They may have thought they were doing their best for the men who were attacking, but in adopting easier positions from which to fire their rifles, they were exposing more of themselves than was safe, and as a result snipers were better able to pick them off.

Private John Moore appears to have come through the Battle of Aubers Ridge without incident. Private Walter Malthouse was not so fortunate. In an interview given to author Lyn MacDonald, the then Corporal Arthur Wilson, universally known as Peter, told of how a large shell exploded on their part of the line, near Fauquissart, blowing his friend Walter Malthouse to pieces. He describes gathering up the body parts, none bigger than a leg of lamb and putting them into a sandbag for burial later. When Peter Wilson, and some others were able, they took their dead friend a short distance behind the line and buried him with all the dignity the situation allowed. Peter Wilson recited the full burial service from his soldier’s prayer book, and prayers were said. They had done their best for their friend. Because of the trajectory of the shell as it came in, the men suspected it was fired from a British Artillery piece. Later, when time and the enemy permitted, Wilson dug in the shell hole left by the explosion, and seemingly confirmed his suspicions when he dug up a British marked fuse.

Despite the stress of the circumstances of the death of Walter Malthouse, Wilson and his small group must have been careful and diligent in marking where they buried his remains because after the war those remains were found and identified. Walter Malthouse now lies buried in Fauquissart Military Cemetery, Laventie.

From then until the end of June 1915, the battalion took over a succession of trench systems, all of which required much work to make them operable as a defensive position. On 25^th June 1915, the battalion was withdrawn from the line, some men were sent home on leave, and the remainder moved north to the area near Boesinghe, above Ypres. Here, they would spend the rest of the year, rotating in and out of the trenches between Sint-Jan and Pilkem. 

The transfer of the battalion from the Fleurbaix sector to Boesinghe was done largely on foot in a series of route marches. Summer heat, heavy equipment and the ever-present lice made the journey north an uncomfortable one, and though John Moore was to suffer months later with a septic right foot, caused by route marching, it seems that he coped well with the trial of the move. Soon after their arrival in Belgium, the summer weather broke, and the battalion marched in driving rain.

July was a fairly busy month for the battalion as they settled into their new surroundings. Time was spent on rotation in and out of the trench lines, resting in camps, cleaning and repairing uniforms and equipment, and route marching. Though there were no large actions involving the battalion, casualties were still taken. Men, careless for perhaps only seconds, were shot by snipers as they broke cover, even the canal bank at Essex Farm which was an advanced dressing station used by the division was well within rifle range. Despite the relative quiet, in terms of offensive action, of those men of the battalion who were killed in July, only one has a marked grave today, at Hospital Farm Cemetery, so it seems he was recovered alive and sent for medical attention and died there. The other men are named on the panels of the Menin Gate Memorial. It is entirely possible that their bodies were recovered and buried in one of the cemeteries used by the division, on or near the present day Diksmuidseweg, but it must be remembered that this was still relatively early in the war and this area was subjected to heavy shell-fire many times before the war ended, with cemeteries being damaged and graves of the already dead and buried being destroyed and lost.

August opened as July had closed, more trench holding, more unsettled weather, creating more energy-sapping mud for the men to negotiate a path through. And after almost two weeks of this, John Moore fell ill and was admitted to 1/3^rd West Riding Field Ambulance where he was diagnosed as suffering from influenza. He spent nine days away from the battalion while he was treated and recovering, roughly half of which was at the Divisional Rest Station while he was well enough not to need a bed in the field ambulance, but not well enough to return to duty. 

All was well with him for a few months, but in December he was again suffering from sickness and was admitted to 1/2^nd West Riding Field Ambulance with Pyrexia. Pyrexia, also known as POU (Pyrexia of unknown origin) was, in the main, caused by the introduction into the body of bacteria picked up from the filthy ground the men had to operate in when they held the trench lines. The ground was contaminated with the bodies of the unrecovered dead and as fastidious as they were, the sanitary sections of the Royal Army Medical Corps could not keep latrine areas in the trenches free from the bacteria which would make men ill. Rats fed on the exposed corpses, and the rat had free rein to roam from no man’s land to the trenches. And rats carried lice. Lice took up residence in the clothing of the men and irritated them either by their bites or simply their movement on the skin. The men scratched themselves to gain some relief, but in so doing, often broke the skin and created a conduit for the bacteria to enter the body, making the men ill through fever. The body’s own defences attacked the bacteria and gave a raised temperature and severe pain in all the joints of the limbs. 

John Moore responded well to treatment and after two days was moved to the rest station, re-joining his battalion for duty on 7^th December, five days after his initial admission.

Between August and mid-December 1915, the lines facing each other in the Boesinghe area, remained static, without any major fighting taking place, but that is not to say that the sector was quiet. Patrolling was a feature of this type of warfare. The men would go out on listening patrols to try to overhear the enemy, they would mount clearance patrols to sweep their front to ensure the enemy was not laying listening to them in some obscured shell hole, and they would put on trench raids designed to capture a prisoner, or anything from the enemy trenches that could identify the units the men were facing across no man’s land. Patrolling was a dangerous and stressful occupation and casualties were frequent when patrols were out. Normal trench routine was also dangerous if the enemy decided to use their artillery to disrupt communications and destroy trenches, and a study of the gallantry awards granted to officers and men of the 49^th (West Riding) Division for the latter half of 1915 show an almost complete monopoly of those awards by those who had distinguished themselves either on patrols, or by digging out men who had been buried during artillery barrages. These awards include the Victoria Cross awarded to Cpl Samuel Meekosha, a Leeds-born Bradford Territorial soldier of the 1/6^th Battalion for leading a party of  men to dig out buried men in full view of the German lines’ opposite. The men he led were each awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Whatever John Moore’s activities were during this period, he neither distinguished himself, nor did he suffer injury. He also got through the gas attack of 19^th December, during which the Germans used phosgene gas for the first time, though many of his comrades in the battalion, and the wider division, were killed and incapacitated in this attack and the artillery barrage that accompanied and followed it.

After Christmas, the division left the Boesinghe sector and moved rearwards to rest camps across the French border where they cleaned up and took stock. The men were in poor condition. Trench foot was prevalent, and in some cases severe, causing some to be returned to the UK for some months while they recovered. The battalion had been reduced to a little over half it’s established strength and it took in new men in drafts while it remained at rest and trained for a move southward towards the Somme.

During this period, route marching was common, and John Moore was suffering. He reported sick on 2^nd February 1916 with sore feet, but instead of rest allowing them recover, his right foot turned septic and he was transferred from 1/3^rd West Riding Field Ambulance to No. 1 Stationary Hospital at Rouen, where his condition failed to improve, forcing him to be invalided back to the UK aboard the Hospital Ship ‘Copenhagen’ on 21^st February. It was during this period in hospital that John Moore was diagnosed as having diabetes. It is recorded that he displayed a constant thirst, and one of the symptoms of diabetes is foot ulcers.

John Moore’s active soldiering was at an end. He was discharged from the Army on 10^th May 1916 to an immediate pension of 25 shillings per week in respect of his 100% incapacity, which was later increased by a further 6d per week. He was also awarded the Silver War Badge to show he had served and been honourably discharged. Though he may have looked outwardly healthy, John Moore was a young man in his twenties crippled by diabetes caused by his war service. The addition of a Silver War Badge to the lapel of a civilian jacket may have helped him avoid the attention of those who dedicated their time to shaming ‘shirkers’ in the street.

As with many illnesses and diseases that are either treatable or manageable today, diabetes was not so clearly understood during the Great War, despite the disease first being described over 3500 years ago, and insulin treatments were still a few years in the future. John Moore’s condition deteriorated over the next two years, until on 4^th April 1918, he died at home at 18 Nunnery Lane, York. He was 25 years old.

Even though Thomas Moore, John’s father, held a good position at work, the cost of burying his son was considerable and, no doubt, difficult to bear with a large family to provide for. The cost of the burial plot at York City Cemetery was 6 Guineas, with a further 25-shilling fee for the grave to be opened to a depth of ten feet.

John Moore was buried in the grave, and it was surrounded by kerbs rather than having a headstone erected over it. The family chose an inscription in the following terms; ‘In Loving Memory of our dear son John Moore Died 4^th April 1918 – aged 25 years. In the midst of life, we are in death.’

He would eventually be joined by his father who died in October 1940, and by his mother, who died on 7^th May 1942, only days after the German Baedeker Raid on York which saw the Bar Convent at the Blossom Street end of Nunnery Lane bombed, killing 5 nuns. Henrietta Moore is not among those recognised as a casualty of the raid, although she will have been a witness to what happened.

In 2017, I bought John Moore’s medals, a 1914-15 Star Trio at auction, and set about researching him. The medals came with no ribbons or further information, and I was surprised to find that although he had died as a result of his service, he was not commemorated as a war casualty by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The fact that he died after his discharge may have contributed to some administrative error which caused him to be passed over, however this should not have ruled him out for commemoration.

The rules governing who is eligible for commemoration and granted War Graves status are necessarily strict, but also clear. John Moore fits the rules in the following terms; he died between 4^th August 1914 and 31^st August 1921, and his death was caused by the same condition which forced his discharge from the services. Thankfully his Army Service Record, Department of Pensions papers, and his death certificate all specifically state that diabetes was the cause of his discharge and death. In those circumstances, the rules say that John Moore IS a casualty of the Great War, and that he IS entitled to have his grave granted War Graves status, with the protections such status brings.

I compiled and submitted a case for consideration to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the hope that John Moore would be recognised in time for the centenary of his death, but at the time of writing, his case remains outstanding.

Update - 13th August 2020 Pte John Moore has now been accepted as a casualty by Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He is currently commemorated in the United Kingdom Book of Remembrance, but hopefully his commemoration can soon be moved to his actual grave in York Cemetery. 

Main sources consulted: Sheehan, John. Harrogate Terriers. (Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military, 2017)
                MacDonald, Lyn. 1915 - The Death of Innocence. (London: Headline Book Publishing, 1993)