Navi gation

William Barringer

Private 9471, 2nd Sherwood Foresters, killed in action 20 September 1914

At 7.32 p.m. on the evening of 4 August 1914 a telegram from Whittington Barracks ordered the 2nd Sherwood Foresters to mobilise for war. The 2nd battalion were enjoying their last moments of peace in Sheffield and its sister battalion, the 1st battalion on overseas duty, was recalled from duty in Bombay, India.

The 2nd battalion were not part of the BEF’s original plan but immediately began preparing for the expected orders to proceed to France. On 6 August reservists from the depot and a detachment in North Shields arrived at 10.30 p.m. At 8.30 p.m. on the following day orders were received to proceed to Edinburgh. In the early hours of 8 August the 30 Officers and 929 men of the battalion were packed into railway cars at Wadsley Bridge and were transported to cavalry barracks at Piershill, Edinburgh. On the 9th the battalion declared itself to be fully mobilised.

Amongst the reservists who arrived on 6 August were four men from Tibshelf: Tom Harris, Fred Ward, J.W. Swales and William Barringer, a 27 year old miner who was living just across the county border in Teversal, Nottinghamshire. William had been a professional soldier before going on the reserve list and taking up a new occupation. Many times he must have contemplated the reality of war and how he would respond to it. Now the period of contemplation was over. With the war barely hours old he said goodbye to his wife Ethel and responded to his country’s call.

No doubt, like many of his comrades in the late summer of 1914, the outbreak of war would have caused him great excitement. There is much contemporary evidence to suggest that an overwhelming majority of soldiers going to France in 1914 expected to help the French win the war quickly and give the Kaiser of Germany a ‘bloody nose’ and it would be fair to assume that Private Barringer was one of them. He could not possibly have guessed what lay ahead of him: he would become Tibshelf’s first casualty and would die in his very first engagement with the enemy.

On 12 August the battalions of the 18th Brigade of which the 2nd Sherwood Foresters were a part came together at Holyrood Camp to declare its readiness and on the 14th the battalion was moved to Midsummer Common Camp near Cambridge and received another draft of 17 men from the 3rd Battalion to bring it to full strength

Initial hopes that the BEF would be sufficient to assist the French in winning the war in the west were quick to evaporate and more and more battalions were hastily shipped over to France. On 7 September the 2nd Sherwood Foresters received their orders to embark for the continent. Following a six-hour route march the battalion left Newmarket station for Southampton. The following day the battalion assembled on board the SS. Georgian and arrived at St. Nazaire on the 10th. The next 24 hours were uncomfortable as the volume of transport ships in the harbour forced the battalion to stay on board and wait their turn to unload. [1]

During the night of the 11th –12th the battalion finally began disembarking, a process made more laborious by the lack of shore cranes to lift their heavy equipment and transport. The frustrated men of the battalion entrained later in the afternoon having been forced to leave many of their carts and wagons behind in the hope that they would catch up soon. Nevertheless on the evening of the 13th the battalion detrained at Coulommiers, having experienced the warmth of their French hosts, “en route all ranks of the battalion were touched by the hospitality of the ladies of Chateaubriand, who had set up a buffet at the railway station and regaled the troops with all sorts of good things” [2] . The pleasure was swiftly dissipated by busy Officers ordering groups of men to overnight billets in granaries and the town’s sugar factory.

In the morning the Officers were once again bustling about organising platoons and companies as the 2nd Sherwood Foresters began the process of taking up their position within the British Expeditionary Force as part of the 18th Brigade, 6th Division, I Corps. At 1.00 p.m., satisfied that all was well, the battalion formed into a marching column, four men abreast, and set off through Coulommiers, to the great interest of the local inhabitants and marched six miles to Doue before billeting again. The relative ease of 14 September was not repeated on the 15th: a fifteen hour march “in very heavy rain” took the battalion to Chateau Thierry and “very cramped” billets. [3]

Following a poor nights rest the 2nd Sherwood Foresters assembled at dawn for more marching in heavy rain. The roads, now churned up by the passage of thousands of British and French infantry, cavalry and transport wagons, were muddy and heavy and there must have been great relief when, just over twelve hours later, the march was halted at Parcy et Tigne and Officers directed the men to dry barns in nearby large farms. The march itself had been hard as well as long. The men had been faced with a series of long, gentle inclines, of the kind that soon sap the energy in the legs. Physically exhausted the men collapsed on the hay.

17 September was drier and an early three-hour march to Chacrise proved, thankfully, to be the only exertions of the day. The men were billeted in the large farm of a Monsieur Dubois for a well-earned rest. There must have been much talk amongst the men about where they were headed and what they would face, but one thing was becoming increasingly clear to them: this was a critical time for the allies. The initial German advances of the Schlieffen Plan had been checked and there were hopes of pushing the Germans out of France and Belgium and fulfilling the predictions of ending the war by Christmas. The Battle of the Aisne had begun on 12 September and most of the Sherwood Foresters must have guessed that they would soon be participating in it.

At a wider level the war was about to embark on a new phase: the trench war that is so familiar to us. As the Germans recoiled from the Allied counterattacks of September they desperately searched for a place to hold and resist the tide. The Aisne would be that place.

“By now the weather had broken. It was miserable, wet and cold, and as the Allies reached the Aisne on 12 September there was a storm of Wagnerian proportions that hurled aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps parked for the night across the grass into each other, leaving a tangled mass of wood and canvas. The British Army was deprived of its 'eyes' just when it needed information about the enemy positions on the far side of the river. The 4th Division, crossing by means of a damaged bridge, was able to gain a foothold on the Aisne's north bank, but most of the BEF were still on the south bank: any undamaged bridges were strongly held by German infantry, and the Germans were staring to dig in on the heights above the Aisne.” [4]

Whilst the battalion rested in M. Dubois’s farm on the 17th, Field Marshall John French, Commander in Chief of the British Army in France, issued the following message to all troops of the BEF,

“Once more I have to express my deep appreciation of the splendid behaviour of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the army under my command throughout the great Battle of the Aisne, which has been in progress since the evening of the 12th inst., and the Battle of the Marne, which lasted from the morning of the 6th to the evening of the 10th, and finally ended in the precipitate flight of the enemy….The self sacrificing devotion and splendid spirit of the British army in France will carry all before it”.

William Barringer would have had this message relayed to him and his comrades by the Officers of the battalion and they took pride and comfort in it. High confidence and an unshakeable faith in their own ability was a characteristic of the BEF in this early stage of the war even though the casualty rate was already appallingly high: between the arrival of the first BEF units and the issuing of French’s message 339 Officers and 4468 men had been killed.

Following a beneficial 24 hour rest period the battalion assembled again at 1.00 p.m. on the 18th with orders to detach itself temporarily from the command of 18th Brigade and march to 1st Army HQ at Dhuizel, some twelve miles away. The wind and rain added significantly to the unease especially as the long, straight roads were not lined with hedges or trees to lessen the effects of the weather. Many of the British soldiers, seeing France for the first time would have been struck by the open nature of the terrain with hardly a hedgerow in sight in any direction.

Nevertheless the men they were still capable of putting on a show, for later that evening a car containing General Sir. Horace Smith Dorrien, a Colonel of the Sherwood Foresters regiment and commander of II Corps, overtook them near Braine. Hearing that his old regiment were around he had taken the trouble to find and greet them. The battalion war diary proudly recorded,

The battalion filed past him in splendid order at the end of their long day’s march and we were all delighted when he told us that he had not seen any marching so good in the Expeditionary Force.

The splendid Church at Braine, past which the 2nd Sherwood's marched

Nevertheless the men they were still capable of putting on a show, for later that evening a car containing General Sir. Horace Smith Dorrien, a Colonel of the Sherwood Foresters regiment and commander of II Corps, overtook them near Braine. Hearing that his old regiment were around he had taken the trouble to find and greet them. The battalion war diary proudly recorded,

The battalion filed past him in splendid order at the end of their long day’s march and we were all delighted when he told us that he had not seen any marching so good in the Expeditionary Force.
After dark, following their display of marching, the battalion billeted at Dhuizel for a well-earned sleep. At 3 a.m. Officers calling the ‘stand to’ interrupted the men’s rest. Rifle fire had been heard in the distance for the first time.

In darkness the battalion began marching to the sound of the guns and joined up with the three other battalions of 18th Brigade as Brigadier General Congreve VC began the vital process of consolidating his command. After crossing the Aisne by a pontoon bridge, erected by Royal Engineers between Pont Arcy and Bourg et Comin, the men settled down for a brief breakfast before continuing their windswept march up another gentle incline and then down into the steep sided Troyon valley and the small village of Vendresse.

It was here that, just a few days before, the first British forces crossed the Aisne:

The Coldstream Guards crossed on 14 September, pulling themselves up the far slopes by hanging on to the branches of trees. The Dragoon Guards forced their crossing of the river at Bourg in a dashing cavalry charge along the towpath of the Canal de l'Oise aqueduct that runs above the Aisne itself. The Royal Fusiliers, by now dog-tired after what had seemed an endless pursuit, crossed during the night at Vailly by the sort of bridge their engineers had made when ravines barred the way in India - a primitive arrangement of suspended boxes, without so much as a handrail. Several men were drowned, and the others found themselves on the spur leading up to the high ground of the Chemin des Dames. It was there that the German retreat came to an end… [5]

Map 1. Click to enlarge

Immediately upon arrival at Vendresse-Troyon the 2nd Sherwood Foresters were ordered to relieve the 1st Black Watch in trenches a little south of the Chemin des Dames, a road that would become notorious later in the war. What William Barringer and his comrades saw was a bare plateau of high ground, with dense woods dotted around the nearby slopes and the River Aisne flowing about two and a half miles to the south.

The Forester’s first experience of front line trenches was brief for later that day they were relieved by the 1st Gloucesters and moved to a reserve line north of Troyon, in a well-placed reverse slope that would have pleased the Duke of Wellington ninety-nine years earlier. The 18th Brigade had taken up positions on the extreme right flank of the BEF and some of the men probably began fraternising with their French allies on their right, Moroccan troops from French North Africa

However 18th Brigade was not in the most ideal position. Thinly spread, covering a front wider than that normally expected of a Brigade, tired and overlooked by an enemy on higher ground about two miles away, north of the Chemin des Dames, the men deployed for action. The 2nd Sherwood Foresters would form Brigade reserve just north and east of Troyon behind, from left to right, 1st East Yorkshire, 2nd Durham Light Infantry (DLI) and 1st West Yorkshire battalions.

The line in front of us was held by the newly arrived 18th Brigade of the 6th Division. This Brigade, under General Congreve, consisted of the 1st West Yorks, 1st East Yorks, 2nd Notts and Derby and 2nd Durham Light Infantry. The extreme right of the line was in the hands of the West Yorks, a green regiment so far as German tricks were concerned. [6]

The area in which 18th Brigade deployed had already seen several days of battle in which both protagonists had repeatedly attacked each other before recoiling to their initial positions. As a consequence it was on the Aisne that the most defining characteristic of the Great War, long lines of static trench systems, began to appear for the first time, and with them two new enemies to contend with, the weather and enemy artillery.

The general characteristics of the week which saw the beginning of trench warfare were continued wet weather, intermittent bombardment by both sides, steady advance of the German trenches to closer quarters with the British, and almost daily German attacks of a more or less serious nature. These were made….to hold the Allied forces on the Aisne whilst troops were being shifted to the western flank. The losses from the heavy German shells were at the outset considerable, for the British trenches were as yet so incomplete as to afford only indifferent shelter. [7]

Furthermore, 18th Brigade were taking possession of a sector which was already developing a deadly reputation:

On the right of the I Corps front the trenches….just south of the Chemin des Dames were subjected to a galling enfilade fire both from rifles and guns. The plateau of Paissy again was swept by artillery fire from east, north and west. German snipers were both active and troublesome…. where their possession of commanding ground combined with the proximity of the trenches gave them decided advantages….Altogether during the first few days of the new warfare the situation of the British seemed anything but good. [8]
20 September dawned cold and wet as ‘a chill rain was falling’ [9] , but the Germans had plans to raise the temperature. General von Heeringen, commanding the German Seventh Army, ordered a general attack by the whole of the VII Reserve Corps on the Franco-British trench lines along the Chemin des Dames. At first light the Germans advanced from the high ground on the other side of the valley and attacked. Their primary concern was the ‘hinge’ position between the British and French armies, a classic target for Generals throughout the ages when faced with dual nationality opponents. If von Heeringen could breakthrough here his troops could roll up both enemy armies and destroy the fragile cohesion between the allied forces.

View from location 'A' - see map 2 below. Click to enlarge.

Almost immediately the Moroccans on the British right flank broke into a retreat and German troops of the 25th Landwehr Regiment swiftly occupied the vacated trenches, leaving the flank of the 1st West Yorkshire’s exposed. A company of the 1st West Yorkshire’s ‘a green regiment so far as German tricks were concerned’ [10] was despatched to take up new positions protecting the flank, the presence of which surprised returning Moroccans who opened fire upon them. In what is today euphemistically termed ‘friendly fire’, 30 men of the West Yorkshire’s became casualties and order crumbled.

View from location 'B' - see map 2 below. Click to enlarge.

 As the West Yorkshire’s broke the right flank of the 2nd DLI now came under threat. The Germans continued pressing down the captured trenches forcing the 1st East Yorkshires to turn to their right and come to the DLI’s aid. Both British battalions’s suffered heavily from rifle, machine gun and shrapnel shells. The 1st East Yorkshire’s fared particularly badly, “No sooner, however, did they leave their trenches than they were beaten back to them by overwhelming shrapnel and machine-gun fire”. [11]

In worsening weather conditions, consisting of heavy rain, sleet, and occasional hail, the 1st West Yorkshires now became the target for several hours of rifle and shell fire before another German assault was launched shortly after 10.00 a.m. his attack was driven off but undaunted the enemy came on again shortly after mid-day.

Once more the Moroccans on the right fell back but this time the Germans seized their advantage and began enfilading the West Yorkshire’s and rolling up their trench line. According to the Official History,

Between noon and 1 P.M. the enemy delivered a third attack under cover of a heavy storm of rain, and once again the Moroccans fell back. Once again Lieut.-Colonel Towsey threw out a company eastward to protect his right, at the same time asking help from the 2nd Cavalry Brigade at Paissy. But before this could come, the enemy, having advanced into the gap left by the Moroccans, enfiladed and, after inflicting heavy casualties, charged and captured the remnants of the right company of the West Yorkshire. Within half an hour, working down the line, the Germans were in occupation of the entire front trenches of the battalion and had swept what remained of two more companies into captivity. The officer commanding led forward his one remaining company to retrieve the situation, but being met by heavy fire on front and right flank, whereby he himself was wounded, the survivors fell back on the cavalry at Paissy. [12]

Frederic Coleman, at Divisional Headquarters near Paissy, recorded the arrival of this disastrous news

Like a bolt from the blue came a West Yorks officer with news that the Germans had once again attacked the Zouaves on our right and pushed them back, getting in on the West Yorks' right flank. The Huns had taken some of the West Yorks' trenches, and driven back the line. Two companies of the Yorks Battalion had been captured. No sooner had he told his tale than Phipps-Hornby galloped up. General de Lisle, he said, was trying to get a company of the Yorks together, and wished all available troops sent up at once to reinforce him. [13]

The dreadful news that the Germans had broken into the front line at the head of the Troyon valley and had taken and occupied British trenches quickly reached the 2nd Sherwood Foresters acting as the 18th Brigade’s reserve battalion. During the earlier unsuccessful German attacks Major Leveson-Gower had led ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters, including Private Barringer, forward to a clump of trees behind the front line with orders to stem the enemy tide if required and, if at all possible, retake lost ground.

Forty or so dismounted troopers from ‘B’ Squadron, 18th Hussars, who had answered the West Yorkshire’s calls for help, joined them in the trees and “a couple of hundred dismounted 4th Dragoon Guards, the first line of the counter-attack, under Major Tom Bridges, could be seen climbing the stubble-covered hillside, dotted with still forms in khaki, and crowned by the lost trench.” [14] , The 2nd Sherwood Foresters would undoubtedly have felt emboldened by the support, a point made in the Official History, “The news of the arrival of the cavalry ran like wildfire along the line and had the greatest possible moral effect” [15] .

Map 2. Click to enlarge

 Major Leveson-Gower ordered the advance [16] . On the horizon Private Barringer and his comrades gained their first glimpses of the enemy; grey figures marching away northwards forlorn British prisoners from the Chemin des Dames. Unfortunately the new style of trench warfare rendered these few figures the only visible ones in the entire landscape apart from, of course the two advancing companies of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters. When ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies emerged from the cover of the few trees they were caught in relatively open terrain with only some corn stooks providing any form of concealment and were greeted with heavy, hostile machine gun fire. Casualties were rapidly incurred.

Hastily reinforced by ‘B’ and ‘D’ companies, the whole battalion began a general advance “with a great dash” [17] and charged the West Yorkshire’s former trench positions, now lined with German infantrymen of the 25th Landwehr Regiment. The Sherwood’s officers urged their men on by references to the battle of Alma that had taken place sixty years to the day earlier during the Crimean War: on that day the 95th Regiment (the forerunner of the Sherwood Foresters) had won great pride. The attack, with fixed bayonets, braved the withering enemy fire and “in spite of heavy losses the trenches were re-taken” [18] .

The enemy did not wait for the bayonet, but cleared from the main trench over the sky-line, and as the trenches were retaken, looking along the ridge to the west, it was seen that the East Yorkshires and Durham Light Infantry had advanced from their trenches, but were being driven back by an overwhelming shrapnel and machine gun fire. [19]

No doubt emboldened by their success, some junior officers decided to press their advantage.

A small number of men, headed by Lieutenants Murray and Whicher [20] , made their way into the trenches, the latter having the satisfaction of bayoneting a German; of poor Murray I cannot speak too highly; he gallantly led his men taking every advantage of dead ground, and was eventually shot as he was standing up in the trenches shouting to the men behind which way to come up. Ash and Milner [21] also admirably led their men up the valley, but were killed, with most of their fellows, by the deadly machine guns; the advance thus came to an end, the line held being along the bank and so along the edge of the wood. [22]

Frederic Coleman’s account of the victorious British charge, viewed from near Paissy, concentrates on the part played by the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish), unfairly relegating the role played by the 2nd Sherwood Foresters, referred to simply as ‘the support’, in its success. The evocative and somewhat exaggerated description by Coleman, referring to the 4th Dragoon Guards as ‘invincible’ and ‘superhuman’, raises questions as to its accuracy and objectivity. In addition ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War’ records no deaths in the 4th Dragoon Guards for the day in question, suggesting that their role in the attack may not have been as great as that of the Sherwood Foresters who lost 44 men killed. [23] It is therefore possible that, from his distant vantage point, the events he described could well have been the attack of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters.

Still up the stubble crept the thin line, (Major) Bridges' tall form in the lead. The support, eager to have a hand in the game, pressed on in haste, but could not overtake the invincible Dragoon Guards, who swept away the Germans in their vastly superior numbers as if endowed with some superhuman power. They gave the Huns no rest. Pouring a deadly and accurate fire into the blue-grey ranks as they came on, Bridges and his 200 reached the front trench at last under a very heavy canopy of whizzing bullets. With a wild cheer, they leaped at the Germans, and threw them back from the trenches. The fierceness of the onslaught could no more be withstood than one could stem a cyclone. The lost position regained, the big major leaped ahead, and again his men poured on after him. The enemy was not only to lose what he had won, but more. Before the 4th Dragoon Guards stopped, they had taken the Chemin des Dames, three or four hundred yards ahead of our original position. [24]

‘A’ and ‘C’ companies of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters had contributed significantly towards the success of the attack and, following closely on the heels of the victorious leading companies, ‘B’ and ‘D’ companies entered the retaken trenches by the Chemin des Dames. Evidence of the ferocity of the fight lay all around,

Captain Popham (C Company) was passed sitting in one of the dug-outs, his face streaming with blood, cursing the Germans in his inimitable way and telling the men ‘to go for them and give them what for’. [25]

The Forester's trench line on the Chemin des Dames, viewed from location 'C' - see map 2 above. Click to enlarge.

 A final attack, launched from the retaken trenches, was made by a platoon from ‘D’ Company under the already wounded Lieutenant Lawrence Arthur Bernard. Most of the platoon, 36 in all, were killed (including Bernard) or wounded, in this futile attempt. This failure convinced the battalion to give up further attacks and the men prepared to hold on to the regained trenches, a decision made easier by the fact that the French had also retaken their trenches to the British right. Nevertheless the 2nd Sherwood Foresters had played a vital role in the day’s events, a fact recognised by the Official History,

The lost trenches were finally regained by a dashing counter-attack of the Sherwood Foresters, but at a cost of two hundred casualties, mostly from machine-gun fire. It was 4.30 P.M. when the situation was thus restored. The day had cost the 2nd Cavalry and 18th Brigades nearly 400 killed and wounded and 500 missing. [26]

One of the wounded men of the 2nd Shewood Foresters was almost certainly Private Henry Styring. His story is available here.

The story narrated above gives, by necessity, only an account of one sector of the battle of 20 September. The Official History sums up neatly the wider perspective,

Altogether the 20th September was a successful day for the British, though it cost the B.E.F. nearly twenty-two hundred killed, wounded and missing. The Germans had delivered four serious attacks at four different points and had, after first gaining some little advantage, been everywhere repulsed. [27]

At 6 a.m. the following morning the 2nd Sherwood Foresters were very heavily shelled, an ordeal that lasted for the next nine hours and resumed again at 5 p.m.

The 2nd Notts and Derby came in for an awful hammering during the afternoon. Battery after battery of the enemy's guns were turned on the trenches above Paissy, but our men stuck to their line in spite of the inferno the howitzers made of it. The men reported seeing many Germans in front of them in British caps and tunics. The Hun trenches were 400 yards from ours, and the desire of the German soldiers to show themselves in their newly captured khaki outfits was overpowering until the Notts and Derby sharpshooters convinced them of the fool-hardiness of so doing. [28]

The view from location 'D' - see map 2 above. Click to enlarge.

 The Sherwoods spent much of the day scratching out holes in the walls of the shallow trenches to hide in but, as the trenches were dug into very rocky soil, this proved largely ineffective and pointless. Little rest was gained during an uncomfortable night and the shelling began again the next morning, if anything with even more ferocity. During the night of the 23rd the battalion was finally relieved and went back into reserve. At about the same time, Frederic Coleman went forward to the trenches that the Sherwood Forester’s had tenaciously fought for and occupied.

The Sherwoods spent much of the day scratching out holes in the walls of the shallow trenches to hide in but, as the trenches were dug into very rocky soil, this proved largely ineffective and pointless. Little rest was gained during an uncomfortable night and the shelling began again the next morning, if anything with even more ferocity. During the night of the 23rd the battalion was finally relieved and went back into reserve. At about the same time, Frederic Coleman went forward to the trenches that the Sherwood Forester’s had tenaciously fought for and occupied.

Rifles, coats, kits, and all manner of personal property were thrown about the trench where the fiercest part of the action had taken place. Bibles, notebooks, match-boxes, bits of clothing, knives — the jumble of oddments contained everything a soldier ever carried and many things one would never associate with Tommy or his German prototype. In a little rain-washed gully a miniature case lay half-covered in the mud. Inside it was the work of an artist of ability, a lovely face painted deftly on ivory, the sort of face possessing a sweetness of expression that makes one wonder where one has seen the original. [29]

The officers of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters could now carry out their first proper roll call in three days. William Barringer did not answer to his name. Comrades stated that he had been killed in the initial attack on the 20th, probably by the German machine guns: as he was not recovered for burial one could assume that he had participated in one of the failed attacks launched from the retaken trenches (and thus lay in ‘no man’s land’), or that the intense shelling left his body buried or unidentifiable. There is of course the possibility that he rests in a nearby cemetery in one of the intensely sad graves marked with ‘ A Soldier of the Great War. Known unto God’ or that he was buried but the grave site subsequently lost. The other Tibshelf combatants of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters, Tom Harris, Fred Ward and J.W. Swales survived to fight another day, and we will encounter them again.

Colonel Edward D. Swinton, DSO, made the following note on the events of 20 September 1914:

On Sunday, the 20th, nothing of importance occurred until the afternoon, when there was a break in the clouds and an interval of feeble sunshine, which was hardly powerful enough to warm the soaking troops. The Germans took advantage of this brief spell of fine weather to make several counter-attacks against different points. These were all repulsed with loss to the enemy, but the casualties incurred by us were by no means light.

The parents of William Barringer, Thomas and Hannah, and his wife Ethel, had they seen Swinton’s account, might have felt it an inadequate epitaph to the day in which their son and husband was killed. William, aged 27, was dead, killed in his first encounter with the enemy along with 43 other Sherwood Foresters [30] . The manner of his death was never known to his family and is told here for the first time. His name is inscribed on the La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial, Seine-et-Marne: merely one of 3,888. [31]

The memorial at La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre, and William Barringer's commemorative inscription.

[1]   The battalion’s strength upon disembarkation is given in Col. H.C. Wylly’s The 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Sherwood Foresters, in the Great War, pp. 94-.95, as 26 Officers, 6 Warrant Officers, 46 Sergeants, 48 Corporals, 16 Drummers and 814 Privates, a total of 956.

[2] Col. H.C. Wylly’s The 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Sherwood Foresters, in the Great War, p.96.

[3]   2nd Battalion War Diary. WO95/1616.

[4]   Paul Greenwood, The British Expeditionary Force August – September 1914, http://perso.club-internet.fr/batmarn1/bef_1914.htm

[5]   Paul Greenwood, The British Expeditionary Force August – September 1914, http://perso.club-internet.fr/batmarn1/bef_1914.htm

[6]   Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[7]   Official History, Vol I.

[8]   Official History, Vol I.

[9]   Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[10]   Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[11]   Official History, Vol I.

[12]   Official History, Vol I.

[13] Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[14] Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[15]   Official History, Vol I.

[16]   Major P. Leveson-Gower survived the war.

[17]   2nd Battalion war diary. WO95/1616.

[18]   2nd Battalion war diary. WO95/1616.

[19]   Col. H.C. Wylly’s The 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Sherwood Foresters, in the Great War, p.98.

[20]   Lt. Patrick Maxwell Murray (‘B’ company) was killed. Lt. Whicher (‘C’ company) survived the war.

[21]   Second Lieutenant Roydenzil Pashley Milner (‘A’ company) and Lt. Basil Claudius Ash (‘C’ company) were both killed.

[22]   Unidentified eyewitness, quoted in Col. H.C. Wylly’s The 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Sherwood Foresters, in the Great War, p.98.

[23]   ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War, CD-Rom, Naval & Military Press. See also footnote 60 for details of Sherwood Foresters casualties.

[24]  Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[25]   Unidentified eyewitness, quoted in Col. H.C. Wylly’s The 1st and 2nd Battalions, The Sherwood Foresters, in the Great War, p.98. Although wounded, Captain Popham would recover and survive the war.

[26]   Official History, Vol I.

[27]   Official History, Vol I.

[28]  Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[29]  Frederic Coleman, ‘From Mons to Ypres with General French - A Personal Narrative', A. L. Burt Company, 1916.

[30]   According to ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War’ 44 Sherwood Foresters had been killed on the 20th. The war diary records total casualties for the three days as 5 officers and 44 men killed with 8 officers and 165 men wounded.

[31]   Other 18th Brigade deaths, 20 September 1914, according to ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War’: 1st West Yorkshire, 81 men; 2nd Durham Light Infantry, 10 men; 1st East Yorkshire, 25 men.