WWI Service Records

Details for WWI Military Service - Blisworth
Most of these entries are a result of communications with relatives of the soldiers

J R Clarke	John Robert Clarke served in D company 2nd Suffolk Regiment. This regiment was part of the British Expeditionary Force who were sent to France and Belgium in WW1. The Battle of Le Cateau occurred on 26 August 1914, after the British, French and Belgians retreated from the Battle of Mons and set up defensive positions in a fighting withdrawal against the German advance at Le Cateau-Cambrésis on 26 August 1914. In the morning on 26 August, the Germans arrived and heavily attacked the British. By the afternoon, the right, then left flanks of the British, began to break. The arrival of the French cavalry protected the left flank. That night, the Allies withdrew to Saint-Quentin. Of the 40,000 Allied men fighting at Le Cateau, 7,812 were injured, killed or taken prisoner. Several British regiments had even disappeared from the rolls altogether. John Robert Clarke was then taken as a POW and subsequently imprisoned in the German POW camp in Doberitz, Latvia where he eventually died in 1917. The mailing of postcards back to ones family in Britain was evidently allowed at this camp. John Robert Clarke was an uncle to the late George Clarke of 11 Courteenhall Road, Blisworth. Information provided by a great nephew Tom Clarke.
J T Clarke	According to the war diary. Private Joseph Thomas Clarke was building and repairing roads during WW1. He had survived the battle of the Somme which had started in 1st July and in which thousands of soldiers were known to be killed, wounded or listed as missing. He was killed on the 31st July in Carnoy whilst at a Royal Engineers ammo dump by an enemy shell. The place where he was killed is only 44 miles away from where his brother was captured by the Germans in 1914. Joseph Thomas Clarke was an uncle to the late George Clarke of 11 Courteenhall Road, Blisworth. The cemetery, where J T Clarke rests, was begun by French troops in October 1914, but little used by them. It was used by Commonwealth troops from August 1915 to February 1917, particularly during the Battle of the Somme, when the XIV Corps Main Dressing station, for the wounded, was at the farm. During the retreat and advance of 1918, further burials were made and after the Armistice, graves of March, August and September 1918, were brought in from the fields between Bronfay Farm and Bray. The cemetery was designed by Edwin Lutyens. Information provided by a great nephew Tom Clarke.

Bronfay Farm is located in a large tract of flat open farm land north of the River Somme. Pictures by Tom Clarke.