ALDERLEY EDGE CIVIC SERVICE, 2014
One hundred years ago today, on July 6th 1914, the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg sent a telegram to the Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary. It was just eight days after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie at Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. The telegram promised Germany’s support for whatever action Austria-Hungary decided to take towards Serbia. It became known as the ‘blank cheque’ and was a decisive moment in the countdown to war. One month later, Germany and Austria-Hungary were at war with Russia and France. Germany’s plans for war with France involved an invasion through Belgium in contravention of an international treaty guaranteeing Belgian neutrality. When German troops entered Belgium, Britain declared war on Germany. Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, standing at the window of the Foreign Office on the evening of 3rd August as the lights were being lit in the Mall, remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time".
Six months later, in February 1915, the Alderley & Wilmslow Advertiser carried an article of which this is an extract:
News has been received at the Alderley Edge Union Club of the death of Corporal Jack Gibbons, one of their members.
Corporal Gibbons, who was a reservist in the 10th Hussars, was called up on August 4th and went out with the Expeditionary Force. He was raised to the rank of Corporal whilst on active service. Before going out to the front he was employed as a chauffeur in Alderley Edge, where he was very well known. The news was received by a letter from Private K. Martin, of which the following is a copy:
Dear Friends – I am very sorry to write and let you know that my dear chum Jack Gibbons has died in action. HE DIED LIKE A HERO, DOING HIS DUTY FOR HIS KING AND COUNTRY, and the officer commanding our squadron wishes all his friends to know that if he had lived he would have sent his name in for the D.C.M. I was with him just before he was killed, and how I escaped myself I do not know, as we were in a very hot place for a few hours.
The next sentence, which evidently described the action, was censored.
Jack Gibbons was the first to die of the 72 men whose names are recorded on the War Memorial. The Roll of Honour which is read out every year in the Remembrance Day service adds 6 others. Infantry regiments were organised on a territorial basis, so it is not surprising that 20 of the 72 were in the Cheshire Regiment and another 8 in the Manchesters. 4 others were also originally in one or other of these two regiments but had been transferred to other units when they died. 7 were in various artillery regiments. This was the first war in which aircraft figured and three Alderley Edge men served in the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service or Royal Air Force - and two of them drowned, presumably because their fairly primitive machines came down in the sea. One served in the Canadian Infantry, having emigrated; he is commemorated here because he was born and brought up in Alderley Edge, where his parents still lived.
Not surprisingly, most were in their late teens or 20s – 52 out of the 72. The youngest, Frederick Deakins Burgess, was a month short of his 19th birthday. The two oldest, both aged 46, were Captain Arthur Edward Consterdine, the youngest son of the first Vicar of this parish, and Lieutenant Frederic Gordon Ross, a cotton merchant, who is commemorated on the plaque in the north aisle.
These two were among the 17 commissioned officers, most of whom were subalterns. 14 were NCOs. The officers, as you might expect in the early 20th century Alderley Edge, were from the families of the Manchester business and professional men. But it is also typical of pre-First World War Alderley Edge that 9 of the other ranks were described in the 1911 census as gardeners. And what really matters is that they came from all classes: Lieutenant Colonel Worthington lived at Broomfield, a house with 18 rooms according to the census, and Lieutenant Edward Schill lived at Croston Towers (19 rooms), while at the other end of the scale, the Davies brothers, Albert Vincent and Gilbert Edward, lived in a 5-room terrace house in Chapel Street with their parents, another brother and three sisters.
18 Alderley Edge men died during the battle of the Somme, including 4 on the notorious first day, July 1st 1916, the worst day in the history of the British army. One of these, Private William Price Griffiths, is one of two men named on a memorial in the Methodist Church as having “laid down their lives for freedom and their country in the Great War”. 10 of those named on the Cenotaph have no known grave. Most of the others are buried or commemorated in Flanders or the Pas de Calais, including 4 named on the Menin Gate in Ypres. But there are also 2 buried or commemorated in Iraq, 2 in Israel/ Palestine, 1 in Greece, 1 in Italy, 1 in Egypt, 2 in Germany. Finally there are 13 in Britain, 6 of them in Alderley Edge Cemetery.
Four men received awards for bravery: one the DSO, one the Military Cross and two the Military Medal. One man is recorded on the memorial as having been awarded the Croix de Guerre –the Belgian one, I suspect, not the French one, as he is buried in a Belgian cemetery. There is more information about the men commemorated on the War Memorial in the exhibition set up by Alderley History Group at the back of the Lady Chapel, which you might to look at after the service.
One other person is commemorated on the war memorial – not on the tablets but on a stone laid in the floor – and that is Mrs Emily Fenton Armitage Hutton. She was the Commandant of the Brookdale Red Cross Military Hospital, which was set up in 1915 in a house which is now incorporated into Alderley Edge School for Girls. Under her leadership it cared for nearly 2000 wounded service men in the four years it was open.
As well as those who paid the ultimate price there were of course many more who served in the forces and survived. After the war was over, speaking at a meeting which began the process of setting up a War Memorial, the Vicar, the Revd G H Cooper, estimated the number of Alderley Edge men who had served at over 400. Some of those 400 will have been wounded, perhaps gassed, and will have suffered the effects for the rest of their lives. The Vicar estimated the number of those wounded at 80.
It is right that the focus this year should be on the First World War, but before I finish let me remind you that September sees the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, so we should perhaps devote a few words to the 24 men who are commemorated on the War Memorial from that conflict. There are three brothers from one family, the Gaigers. All the major military campaigns are represented: North Africa, Italy, Normandy, the Far East. There are men from the Royal Navy, the merchant navy and - the most striking difference from World War 1 - 10 from the Royal Air Force.
Today we honour all those men whose names appear on our War Memorial, from both world wars, but especially in this centenary year those who died in the First World War, the war rightly called the Great War. Today’s world would be very different but for the sacrifice they made. In the words we repeat at each Remembrance Day service, “We will remember them”.