Arthur Robert Raynham Clover was born in St
Catherines Road, Long Melford on May 25, 1896, the second and youngest child of Robert
Raynham Clover a moulder at Ward’s Iron Foundry and Elizabeth Ellen Phoebe [née
Lineham] originally from Kensington in West London. By the age of fourteen he was carpenter’s
apprentice, giving his occupation as joiner on his army attestation form in the
summer of 1915. Arthur spent the next
four years serving with the Essex Regiment before being discharged in December
1918, following his blinding during an enemy gas-shell barrage the previous
year. With the help of St Dunstan’s Home
for blinded ex-servicemen he was retrained as a picture-framer, which provided
a livelihood for much of his later life.
Returning to Long Melford in the 1920s he married local girl Mabel
Ringer in 1928, setting up home at 6 Star Cottages in St Catherines Road, the same street where he had spent the first eighteen years of his life. Arthur Clover died in 1968.
Military Career
 |
| Arthur aged 18 (photograph courtesy of his daughter, Mrs Jean King) |
Arthur
enlisted as Private 21319 on August 28, 1915 in response to Lord Kitchener’s
second call for volunteers, joining the 10th [Service] Battalion,
Essex Regiment to undergo basic training.
On New Year’s Eve 1915 he was posted to the Western Front with 12th
[Reserve] Battalion, Essex Regiment being transferred in the field to 13th
[Service] Battalion a sister unit in the same regiment. Private Clover saw action with this unit,
known also as the West Ham Pals, during the early stages of the Battle of
Delville Wood, one of the many phases of the Somme Offensive of 1916, before
falling prey to influenza in August, a month after the start of the campaign. Invalided to England for convalescence he
spent the rest of the year on Home service.
In January 1917 he return to ‘D’
Company, 10th Battalion, at the time stationed in Belgium on the northern
edge of the Ypres Salient. On the October 21 1917 his company was entrenched around the village of Poelcappelle,
about three miles from the village of Passchendaele when it was bombarded by enemy
gas shells. It is unclear how many men
were injured that day, we do know however, that Arthur was one of the
casualties.
Gas the Double-edged Weapon
International concern that Gas might be
used as a weapon of war was brought to the fore during the Hague Convention held
in 1899 when a specific article was inserted into the final draft.
Article
IV.2 Declaration concerning the Prohibition of the Use of Projectiles with the
Sole Object to Spread Asphyxiating Poisonous Gases: This declaration states that, in any war
between signatory powers, the parties will abstain from using projectiles
"the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious
gases."
The declaration was ratified by all the
major powers including Great Britain and France. The United States refused to ratify this
particular declaration, Germany for their part, vetoed the Convention as a
whole.
The French were the first to use
chemical warfare on the Western Front when they deployed tear gas grenades
against German troops in August 1914.
Germany had already been experimenting with poison gas and in the following
October fired shells containing a sneezing agent onto French positions. The toxicity of the agents used quickly
escalated and by the spring of 1915 the Germans were discharging potentially
lethal doses of chlorine gas during the Second Battle of Ypres. By September of that year Britain had formed
Special Gas Companies, deploying similar formulations of gas against the
Germans during the Battle of Loos. The
fickleness of the wind however, blew much of the gas back through advancing
British troops and into their own trenches.
Despite the tactical shortcomings its
use was embraced by all sides in the conflict, which on the Western Front
alone, caused upwards of 25,000 deaths and half a million casualties.
Arthur’s Slow Road Home
The details of Arthur’s first ten days
to recovery are to be found on his Field Medical Card [see below], which was pinned to his uniform
and followed him through to the military hospital in England.
After lying blinded and in pain
overnight, he was taken by field ambulance to the Casualty Clearing Station at
Lozinghem 45 miles to the rear, for primary diagnosis and treatment. Suffering from the severe effects of phosgene
gas poisoning he was transferred several days later to Base Hospital No.5
at Camiers near Boulogne, at that time run by the US Army. It was not until the end of the month that he
was shipped back to England and on to the Military Hospital in Sheffield. Although the damage to his lungs gradually
improved, his vision never recovered leaving him permanently blind. He remained hospitalised for a further year,
finally being issued with a Silver War Badge and discharged from the Army in
December 1918.
Research by David Gevaux, MA
Melford and the Great War Project
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