David Fellows Flavell (1889-1915)
David – A question of Family Lore
I never met my great great uncle, David Fellows Flavell, but I feel I’ve always known him. His photograph has hung on the wall of my parent’s house since I can remember; a handsome Jack the Lad with twinkling dark brown eyes and mischievous smile.
Of all the relatives who fought in the First World War, he is the one that seems to be most real to me. The fact that he, like countless others, was cut down in his youth, means that he has never aged and his name and memory has lived on, in particular in the name of my own Uncle David, who is named after him.
According to my grandfather, who was born seven years after his death, David was an excellent sportsman – an avid cricketer, though allegedly had a bit of a temper on occasion. He was in the Leicestershire Regiment and apparently his leg or legs were blown off and he died aged 26 in 1915 in the military hospital in Rouen. He is buried in St Sever Cemetery there. Or so family lore goes.
Of all the relatives who fought in the First World War, he is the one that seems to be most real to me. The fact that he, like countless others, was cut down in his youth, means that he has never aged and his name and memory has lived on, in particular in the name of my own Uncle David, who is named after him.
According to my grandfather, who was born seven years after his death, David was an excellent sportsman – an avid cricketer, though allegedly had a bit of a temper on occasion. He was in the Leicestershire Regiment and apparently his leg or legs were blown off and he died aged 26 in 1915 in the military hospital in Rouen. He is buried in St Sever Cemetery there. Or so family lore goes.
David in his uniform
But is this all true? The cricket is hard to prove, but knowing his younger brother’s passion for sports particularly cricket and football, it is quite likely. It is to records that one must dig through to put together a narrative of this great uncle’s war experience.
Growing up
David was born in April 1889 in Leicester to James and Zibiah Flavell (nee Fellows). Named after his maternal grandfather, David was their sixth surviving child and the first child to be born to the couple following their move to Leicester from Sedgley, Staffordshire. There the couple had been licensed victuallers and the landlords of the British Queen Public House in Woodsetton. But sometime in the late 1880s they relocated the seventy or so miles east to Leicester, where James had taken up the position as agent at a sewing machine factory. Growing up with his much elder brother Joseph, and four sisters, the family was completed with a final sibling, David’s brother Herbert, born in 1894.
1891 Census Return for the Flavell Family
By 1901, when David was twelve, the family were living in St Margaret’s, Leicester. By then, his elder brother had flown the nest whilst the older sisters were teaching or working as elastic weavers. His father had received a promotion to superintendent of the sewing machine company. In the 1911 census, his father was now the manager of a loan company, but David who would have been twenty two by this stage had also left the family home. I have failed to find him on the 1911 census at all and a search of emigration lists to Canada (where his elder brother has moved to) have also drawn a blank.
Leicester in the 1890s (c) Leicester Mercury
Joining the Dots – enlistment and death
Leicestershire Regiment Cap Badge
David next turns up on the official record in January 1915 when he married one Susan Dalby in Leicester. It is likely that he wished to be married having joined the 9th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment (service number 9/16740) which was raised in the preceding September as part of Kitchener’s Third New Army. The 9th Battalion was dispatched on the 29th July 1915 (a fact confirmed by David’s Medal Roll index card) and were initially stationed near Tilques, near St Omer. In April 1915, the 9th Battalion was transferred to the 110th Brigade, 39th division.
9th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment (c) Jonathan Capewell
From several sources, it is indicated that David was killed in action on the 22nd October 1915. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission indicates that he is buried in St Sever Cemetery in Rouen. This is some two hundred kilometres from the Western Front where I have good reason to believe that David was based in this period. Rouen was also home to many of the allied military hospitals where wounded soldiers were sent. This to me implied that he had not been killed outright and that family lore is right in suggesting that he died in hospital sometime after being wounded. This suspicion was thus confirmed upon finding his name in the Army Registers of Soldier’s Effects. He is record 209052 in the book (a frightening indicator of the tragic heavy losses suffered in the First World War) and it is made clear that he died on the 22nd October 1915 in the 5th General Hospital in Rouen and on the 16th December later that year, £2.16s.0d was sent to his widow Susan.
The record of David's effects
I know nothing else about this young woman – indeed she is not traditionally part of our family narrative. His medal record tells me that he received the so called ‘Mutt and Jeff’ – the commonly awarded British War Medal and Victory Medal. A different hand, also records him receiving the ’15 Star (known as ‘Pip’), awarded to those who had enlisted prior to conscription in 1916.
"Mutt, Jeff and Pip"
David’s War Experience
The date of David’s death initially made me wonder if he had participated in the Battle of Loos, from the 25th September to the 15th October 1916, which resulted in 3,643 casualties, many of which were Leicestermen, but a further examination of the sources show that the 9th Battalion was not part of the action at the Hohenzollern Redoubt in this period.
Gas attack at the Battle of Loos (c) IWM HU63277B
A reading of the war log of the 110th Brigade from the month leading up to David’s death has not provided me with many answers either. It indicates that the 9th Battalion were based at Pommier near Arras on the Western Front in October 1915, with short periods of relief when the men were sent to rest billets at Humbercamps, a couple of miles away.
The most common description of life in the Pommier trenches in October 1915 was that it was ‘quiet’ or ‘very quiet’ for days at a time, a respite that was punctuated by short periods of shelling (the officer keeping the log, makes various references to ‘wizzbangs’ and grenades though little damage to the allied trench is reported.)
The most common description of life in the Pommier trenches in October 1915 was that it was ‘quiet’ or ‘very quiet’ for days at a time, a respite that was punctuated by short periods of shelling (the officer keeping the log, makes various references to ‘wizzbangs’ and grenades though little damage to the allied trench is reported.)
A map of the Western Front. David was based near Arras (c) www.greatwar.co.uk
The weather was often foggy and activity in the trenches appears to be minimal. This quiet inactivity is briefly enlivened on the 17th October (just five days before David’s death) by the capture of a German soldier who had got caught in barbed wire. The account reads:
‘A German was taken in our barbed wire outside 6th Battalion. He professed to have lost his way. He was unarmed. He belonged to 73rd Regt which he said had been at Monchy since May. He said they [were] relieved in the trenches by battalions every 6 days. They were well fed. The Germans now have a practice of putting up flags on their barbed wire which the prisoner said was only done for amusement.’
No further information on the prisoner of war is to be found. It is quite possible that David had already been out of action at Rouen for several weeks and never knew of this brief excitement. As previously mentioned October seems to have been a quiet month for the 110th Brigade at Pommier. The officer keeping the log only mentions one possible time in which David might have been wounded. On the 12th October, he writes:
‘At 3.15 pm the enemy heavily bombarded the left hand sector – one man was killed.’
Otherwise, one is to potentially suppose that David had been wounded back in September in which the officer records that 116 members of the battalion had been wounded and 19 killed. No figures are given for October.
‘A German was taken in our barbed wire outside 6th Battalion. He professed to have lost his way. He was unarmed. He belonged to 73rd Regt which he said had been at Monchy since May. He said they [were] relieved in the trenches by battalions every 6 days. They were well fed. The Germans now have a practice of putting up flags on their barbed wire which the prisoner said was only done for amusement.’
No further information on the prisoner of war is to be found. It is quite possible that David had already been out of action at Rouen for several weeks and never knew of this brief excitement. As previously mentioned October seems to have been a quiet month for the 110th Brigade at Pommier. The officer keeping the log only mentions one possible time in which David might have been wounded. On the 12th October, he writes:
‘At 3.15 pm the enemy heavily bombarded the left hand sector – one man was killed.’
Otherwise, one is to potentially suppose that David had been wounded back in September in which the officer records that 116 members of the battalion had been wounded and 19 killed. No figures are given for October.
Trenches at Pommier 1916 (c) IWM
So for now, it is not possible to pinpoint exactly David’s last movements, beyond the fact he was likely at Pommier and it was a foggy quiet period there on the Western Front. Was he mortally wounded by a rogue wizzbang? It is hard to say with any certainty at present.
David in his uniform. One of his sisters has labelled it simply 'David'
A final note
The 9th Battalion to which David belonged was to suffer huge losses less than a year later in July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, with the British Army losing 60,000 men on the first day alone. Perhaps, it was a small mercy for David to die in the hospital at Rouen than to be lost in the hell that was the Somme. As one German officer described it: ‘Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more gruesome word.’
Dead soldiers at the Somme 1916 (c) IWM 205194595
David is buried in row A. 13. 29 in St Sever Cemetery. A hundred years after his death, his memory still very much treasured and now, thanks to the records, his own war experience much better comprehended.
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