Pembroke College, Cambridge the Dead of the War of 1914-1918 1. The
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PEMBROKE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE THE DEAD OF THE WAR OF 1914-1918 1. THE 1914-1918 WAR MEMORIAL At Pembroke College, Cambridge the memorial to those of the College identified as having died in the war of 1914-18 is next to the entrance to the college chapel, on the West side of the Hitcham cloister; and the memorial for the war of 1939-45 is opposite, on the East side of the same cloister. The former was designed by T.H. Lyon,[1] made by the Cambridge stonemasons and builders Messrs Rattee and Kett,[2] and dedicated by the then Bishop of Wakefield[3] on 3 December 1924, at a ceremony over which the then Master of Pembroke College[4]presided. The first memorial records three-hundred and eight names,[5] the second one hundred and fifty-two.[6] In each case only those dying on the Allied side are listed. Likewise, for the First war only those killed in action or dying of wounds or other illnesses contracted in military service up to the Armistice are shown.[7] Aside from the omission of those (relatively few) who may have died on the Austro-German and Ottoman side (of whom up to six may in due course be identifiable)[8] or of those whose death, although related to war service, occurred after the list had been drawn up for the stonemasons, the main source of uncertainty in the coverage of the 1914-18 listing concerns having or not belonged to Pembroke College. [9] From 1914 onwards this uncertainty also affects the year recorded as that of first belonging to the College. At the time, for undergraduates, acceptance (usually while still at school or in private tuition), admission (upon arrival at the College at the start of one’s first term), and matriculation (by the University upon completion of its requirements), were separate stages. The list of those whom the First war memorial identifies as having belonged to Pembroke appears to be based on a combination of the acceptance and admissions records; and as the war years drew near these often differed, so that from 1914 onwards several of those listed as having belonged to the College do not appear in its admissions record, or are listed as having joined the college in a year that differs from that implied by the admissions record.[10] [1] Thomas Henry Lyon (1878-1953), an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College (1890), was for many years on the staff of the Cambridge School of Architecture; he is also responsible in particular for the design of the Italian garden at Great Ambrook (Ipplepen, Devon, 1909-12) and of the chapel at Sidney Sussex College (1911). [2] The firm was founded off Station Road, in Cambridge, in 1848, by James Rattee and George Kett, who had worked for Pugin on the Palace of Westminster; in 1926 their firm became part of the Mowlem group, and it has now been wound up over 2006-11. [3] George Rodney Eden (1853-1940) was an undergraduate at Pembroke College (1872), along with two brothers, and later became an honorary Fellow (1903). [4] William Sheldon Hadley (1859-1927), classicist and historian, was the father of P.S. Hadley, who is listed among the dead of the College of the year 1914. [5] The inscription suggests an original number of 300, to which were added three College servants and five undergraduates initially omitted because of a later death (including M.F. Ashwin, 1906, and A.L. Martyn-Linnington, 1911). [6] The memorial for the Second war was designed by John Murray Easton (1889-1975), made by Morris Singer & Co., founders, and dedicated, in the presence of Sir Montagu Butler, Master of Pembroke College, by Edward Wynn, bishop of Ely and honorary Fellow, on 10 July 1948; this memorial omits at least one name, that of Harold Elsdale Molson (1911) of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who died of wounds on 5 February 1946 in British Columbia, and one of whose younger brothers (E.E. Molson, 1913) appears on the First war memorial. [7] The ‘flu pandemic of 1918-1920, to which weakened soldiers were particularly susceptible, accounts for a number of those post-Armistice deaths; but others died only well after the initial adjustments to the stonework (for example A.L. Attwater, 1935). [8] These six are recorded quite tentatively, at the end of the present list. [9] The scope for such uncertainty is reflected in several inaccuracies in the War List published very soon after the war (in 1921), and edited by G.V. Carey for the Cambridge University Press. [10] An example is supplied by S.C. Woodroffe, V.C., listed on the memorial as starting in college in 1915, whereas he had died already two months previously. 2. SOURCES AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS The following alphabetical listing of those whose names are recorded on the Pembroke war memorial collates information from various sources, in particular secondary school and regimental registers and rolls of honour, war-grave commission records, census reports, scattered national archival material, Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses where applicable (i.e., up to 1900), church and civic memorials, and miscellaneous documentation such as sons-of-clergy, Masonic-lodge and major-sportsmen's lists, notably Wisden. The names have been tallied against those shown on the Pembroke war memorial in the Hitcham cloisters, on the College's and the University's war lists, in the University Reporter's record of matriculations and awards, and in the College's admissions book. Uncertainties remain, mainly attributable to a grey area as to whom to count as having been on the College's books at the time of the war; and also which to include of those whose death occurred some months or years after the Armistice. The possible omission of deaths that occurred on the Austro-German side, and various inconsistencies in College and University records, are tentatively noted, either at the end of the list or in the individual entries. The few biographical details that are provided are fragmentary at this late stage, and there is residue of uncertainty as to location as between places of burial and memorials. A list of abbreviations is provided at the end of this section. Entries in blue are still being verified in some or most particulars; which applies in particular to the six entries at the end of the list. In relation to the record of military service, it is useful to recall that on the British side (as indeed, mutatis mutandis, on the other Allies’ as on the Austro-German sides), first, there was an almost automatic transition, from the Combined Cadet Forces which many boarding schools sponsored in the aftermath of the Crimean war, into being gazetted as a subaltern, and likewise from the Officers Training Corps sponsored at Universities; second, these subalterns or second lieutenants were typically assigned in the first instance to the Territorial Force units of the infantry regiment(s) of the subaltern's county of origin; and, third, because promotion, although rapid, was, at least in junior ranks, by length of service, the casualties are heavily skewed towards those who, most recently enlisted into infantry regiments, were closest to the rank-and-file and thus to combat. This can be seen, over the period 1900-1914, from the generally rising proportion of each year’s 40 Pembroke College: percentage of recorded undergraduate admissions who died on the Allied side in the War of 1914-18, by entry who are among the dead: 10 % for the 1900 cohort, 24 % for 1907, and 35 % for 1912. Each 35 year of admission year’s individual death toll is shown alongside. 30 Of those three-hundred and eight listed on the Pembroke war memorial, all but sixteen died as 25 commissioned officers; those who did not were either College staff (three) or mostly either rather 20 older men, or very recently enlisted men (too young to have been gazetted). Nearly three-quarters 15 of the dead were infantrymen at the time of their death; of the remaining seventy-nine, twenty-one died in the air force (Royal Flying Corps, Naval Air Service, or Royal Air Force), twenty-one as gunners 10 in the various artilleries, ten in naval service, ten in medical service, nine in the cavalry and in 5 transport, seven as engineers, and one as a chaplain (two naval chaplains belonging instead to the 0 Navy). 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 The first Pembroke death of the war (H.G. Fielding-Johnson) occurred on 23 August 1914 and of 1900 those listed, eighteen died after the Armistice. At Gallipoli thirteen died; on 25 September 1915, at the battle of Loos, twelve died; at the battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, six died, and at the battles of the Somme over 22 to 27 March 1917 eight died. The average age of the twelve Pembroke dead at Loos was twenty-four years and three months, the youngest nineteen and the oldest thirty-two. Nine months later at the Somme the corresponding average age at death was exactly the same; but by the spring of 1918 on the Somme the average age at death had risen to twenty-nine years and four months – the youngest still under twenty, and the oldest (A.R.Haig-Brown) over thirty-eight. Over the course of the war, other distinctions besides, those listed earned thirty-four Military Crosses, four Croix de Guerre, six Distinguished Service Orders, and three Victoria Crosses. The number of dead is striking also in terms both of multiple siblings and of only sons lost, who are identified on the list by the symbol ; the losses were often to already widowed parents (as indicated where identified).