|
A
warehouseman and then an infantryman in the first world war who was killed in
action at Arras during the Third Battle of the Scarpe |
George Weighill Farndale FAR00617 |
Battle of Arras 1917 |
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
Headlines of Jim’s life are in brown.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Context and local history are in purple.
Geographical
context is in green.
Leeds
1886
George Weighill Farndale, son
of Thomas and Mary Hannah (nee Weighill) Farndale (FAR00394), was born in Tadcaster District in 1886. His military record shows
he was born at Whitkirk, Leeds. George
Weighill Farndale’s birth was registered in Tadcaster District in the fourth
quarter of 1886 (GRO Vol 9c page 786).
1891
Census 1891 – Colton, Templenewsam,
Hunslet
Thomas Farndale, 38, a
cattle feeder
Mary ‘A’ Farndale, 44
Ethel Farndale, 7, daughter,
born Manston 1884
George W Farndale, 4, born Manston 1887
1901
Census 1901 – Colton New Row, Colton,
Templenewsam, Hunslet
Thomas Farndale, 48, cattleman
on farm
Mary Hannah Farndale, 54
Ethel Farndale, 17,
dressmaker’s apprentice, born Barwick 1884
George Weighill Farndale, 14, born Barwick 1887
1911
Census 1911 – New Row, Meyenil Road,
Colton, Templenewsam, Hunslet (now Leeds)
Thomas Farndale, 58 , farm
labourer, born Bishop Wilton 1853
Mary Hannah Farndale, 64
Ethel Farndale, 27,
dressmaker
George Weighill Farndale, 24, warehouseman
Egypt
1915
Military Service: 15/319 L/Cpl George Farndale,
The West Yorkshire Regiment, Awarded British War medal, the Victory Medal and
the 1914 - 15 Star. Served in Egypt in Dec 1915. (Medal Roll).
France,
Western Front
1916
George was a member of the
Colton Institute, which is a cricket club in Leeds. https://coltoninstitute.play-cricket.com/home.
https://colton-institute.business.site/
Skyrack Courier, 14
January 1916: COLTON
INSTITUTE – ROLL OF HONOUR. A Roll of Honour has been compiled for Colton and District
Institute, and the following names appear on it: G Farndale...
He was wounded in 1916 after
the first attack at the Battle of the Somme.
Chester Chronicle, 8 July
1916: TARPORLEY.
WOUNDED SOLDIERS FROM THE BATTLE FRONT. On Tuesday ten more wounded soldiers
arrived at Portal:... Private G Farndale, 15th West Yorks... The …
men's wounds are not of a serious nature. They are all most cheerful. They
were conveyed from Chester Station by motor cars, kindly lent by the Honourable
Mrs Marshall Brooks, Mrs Gordon Houghton, Mr Broughton, Mr G Bebington. Sister Searl
met them at the station.
The Yorkshire Evening Post,
Tuesday 11 July 1916. THE DEBIT SIDE OF THE BRITISH OFFENMSIVE. LEEDS TROOPS WHO
KNEW HOW TO DIE. … A LONG LIST OF WOUNDED. Non commissioned officers and
privates of the Battalion who were reported wounded include: … the two
brothers of Mr F W Jones, of 17, Seaforth Grove, Harehills, are injured.
Private H R Jones is wound in the left arm, and is in hospital at
Sittingbourne, Kent. Private P M Jones, who was buried in a frontline trench
and was injured in the back, is in a French convalescent camp. The latter,
prior to enlistment, was employed by Messrs Ashworth, Brown, and company.
Another employee of the same firm wounded is Private G W Farndale, whose
home is at Colton. His wound is in the shoulder. He is in hospital at Tarporley,
Cheshire.
So we worked with Messrs
Ashworth, Brown and Company before the War.
He was taken to the hospital
at Tarporley in Cheshire.
The cottage hospital later
founded in 1919, had its roots in a Red Cross Hospital in the area which had
cared for injured soldiers since October 1914 with local stalwarts the
Honourable and Mrs Marshall Brooks determined the village should have its own hospital.
He was on the list of
wounded under the “Roll of Honour” in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 August 1916: W Yorks … Farndale
(319), G …
1917
George W Farndale was Killed in Action, aged 30, in France on 3 May
1917. He
was on the
casualty list on 2 May 1917.
15/319 Lance Corporal George
Farndale, died on 3 May 1917, serving
with the 15th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales
Own) and is commemorated at Bay 4, the Arras Memorial, France.
Yorkshire Post, 14 May
1917: LEEDS
MEN WHO HAVE FALLEN. Among the Leeds men who had fallen in action are the
following:... Lance Corporal G W Farndale, the only son of Mr Thomas Farndale,
of Colton...
Leeds Mercury, 14 May 1917: THE TOLL OF WAR IN
YORKSHIRE. BRAVE ONES WHO HAVE FALLEN IN THE FIGHT. The following casualties
were also reported to Leeds men:... Lance Corporal G Weighill Farndale, killed,
of Colton...
Skyrack Courier, 18 May
1917: Lance
Corporal George W Farndale, only son of Mr and Mrs Farndale, of
Colton, died whilst on active service on April 30th. The deceased, who was in
the West Yorkshire Regiment, was well known in the district.
Another George Farndale (FAR00646),
the Highland Light Infantry, was also killed at
the Battle of Arras on 27 May 1917.
15th Battalion
West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales Own) were known as the Leeds Pals.
15th (Service) Battalion
(1st Leeds) - Formed in Leeds in September 1914 by the Lord Mayor and City.
June 1915 : came under orders of 93rd Brigade, 31st Division. December 1915 :
moved to Egypt. Went on to France in March 1916. 7 December 1917 : amalgamated
with 17th Bn to form 15th/17th Bn.
The Battle of Arras (also known as the Second Battle
of Arras) was a British offensive on the Western Front during World War I.
From 9 April to 16 May 1917, British
troops attacked German defences near the French city of Arras on the Western
Front. The British achieved the longest advance since trench warfare had begun,
surpassing the record set by the French Sixth Army on 1 July 1916. The British
advance slowed in the next few days and the German defence recovered. The
battle became a costly stalemate for both sides and by the end of the battle,
the British Third and First Army had suffered about 160,000
and the German6th Army about 125,000 casualties.
For much of the war, the
opposing armies on the Western Front were at stalemate, with a continuous line
of trenches from the Belgian coast to
the Swiss border. The Allied objective from early 1915 was to break
through the German defences into the open ground beyond and engage the
numerically inferior German Army (Westheer) in a war of movement.
The British attack at Arras was part of the French Nivelle
Offensive, the main part of which was the Second Battle of the Aisne 50 miles
(80 km) to the south. The aim of the French offensive was to break
through the German defences in forty-eight hours.[3] At
Arras the Canadians were to re-capture Vimy Ridge,
dominating the Douai Plain to
the east, advance towards Cambrai and divert German reserves from the French front.
The British effort was an
assault on a relatively broad front between Vimy in the
north-west and Bullecourt to the south-east. After a long preparatory
bombardment, the Canadian Corps of the First Army in the
north fought the Battle of Vimy Ridge and took the ridge.
The Third Army in the centre advanced astride the Scarpe River and
in the south, the British Fifth Army attacked the Hindenburg Line (Siegfriedstellung)
but made few gains. The British armies then engaged in a series of small
operations to consolidate the new positions. Although these battles were
generally successful in achieving limited aims, they came at considerable cost.
When the battle officially
ended on 16 May, the British had made significant advances but had been unable
to achieve a breakthrough. New tactics and the
equipment to exploit them had been used, showing that the British had absorbed
the lessons of the Battle of the Somme and could mount
set-piece attacks against fortified field defences. After the Second Battle of
Bullecourt (3–17 May), the Arras sector became a quiet front, that typified
most of the war in the west, except for attacks on the Hindenburg Line and around
Lens, culminating in the Canadian Battle of Hill
70 (15–25 August).
Third Battle of the Scarpe (3–4 May 1917)
After securing the area
around Arleux at the end of April, the British determined to launch another
attack east from Monchy to try to break through the Boiry Riegel and
reach the Wotanstellung, a major German defensive fortification. This was
scheduled to coincide with the Australian attack at Bullecourt to present the
Germans with a two–pronged assault. British commanders hoped that success in
this venture would force the Germans to retreat further to the east. With this
objective in mind, the British launched
another attack near the Scarpe on 3 May. However, neither prong was able to make any significant advances and the
attack was called off the following day
after incurring heavy casualties.
Although this battle was a failure, the British learned important lessons about
the need for close liaison between tanks, infantry and artillery, which they
would use in the Battle of Cambrai, 1917.
Front lines at Arras prior
to the attack
The Third Battle of the
Scarpe, as the fighting over 3/4 May was named, was an unmitigated disaster for
the British Army which suffered nearly 6,000 men killed for little material
gain.
First Battle of Scarpe
The Arras Offensive
George Farndale is buried
and commemorated at the Arras Memorial, Pas de Calais, France.
(Just for the avoidance of
doubt, the George W Farndale who died aged 62 at Leeds in the fourth quarter of
1948 is FAR00614).
Arras Memorial
The Arras Memorial is in the Faubourg-d'Amiens
Cemetery, which is in the Boulevard du General de Gaulle in the western part of
the town of Arras. The cemetery is near the Citadel, approximately 2 kilometres
due west of the railway station.
The French handed over Arras to Commonwealth
forces in the spring of 1916 and the system of tunnels upon which the town is
built were used and developed in preparation for the major offensive planned
for April 1917. The Commonwealth section of the FAUBOURG D'AMIENS CEMETERY was
begun in March 1916, behind the French military cemetery established earlier.
It continued to be used by field ambulances and fighting units until November
1918. The cemetery was enlarged after the Armistice when graves were brought in
from the battlefields and from two smaller cemeteries in the vicinity. The
cemetery contains 2,651 Commonwealth burials of the First World War. In
addition, there are 30 war graves of other nationalities, most of them German.
During the Second World War, Arras was occupied by United Kingdom forces
headquarters until the town was evacuated on 23 May 1940. Arras then remained
in German hands until retaken by Commonwealth and Free French forces on 1
September 1944. The cemetery contains seven Commonwealth burials of the Second
World War. The graves in the French military cemetery were removed after the
First World War to other burial grounds and the land they had occupied was used
for the construction of the Arras Memorial and Arras Flying Services Memorial.
The ARRAS MEMORIAL commemorates almost 35,000 servicemen from the United
Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras sector between the
spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918, the eve of the Advance to Victory, and have
no known grave. The most conspicuous events of this period were the Arras
offensive of April-May 1917, and the German attack in the spring of 1918.
Canadian and Australian servicemen killed in these operations are commemorated
by memorials at Vimy and Villers-Bretonneux. A separate memorial remembers
those killed in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. The ARRAS FLYING SERVICES
MEMORIAL commemorates nearly 1,000 airmen of the Royal Naval Air Service, the
Royal Flying Corps, and the Royal Air Force, either by attachment from other
arms of the forces of the Commonwealth or by original enlistment, who were
killed on the whole Western Front and who have no known grave. Both cemetery
and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with sculpture by Sir William
Reid Dick.
No.
of Identified Casualties: 34738
George W Farndale, is also
remembered on the Memorial, St Mary the Virgin Church, Whitkirk, West Yorkshire
(now SE Leeds). Also a memorial at Temple Newsam, West Yorkshire.