Guest Writers
Harrison Edkins - Gone West
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Written by Hereward
I have just read the article on this site by Gary Raikes Which of You is Spartacus - Part Two. A Call to Arms which describes the tragic loss of Rudyard Kipling’s son John who was a lieutenant in the Irish Guards in the Great War. It has stimulated me to put pen to paper.
Similar stories to that of Lieutenant John Kipling were repeated millions of times throughout the war and each represented a devastating loss to families and friends. Each one was a personal story and the sad effects usually lasted for many years after the end of the war.
My godmother grew up without a father because he was killed in that war. She said that when she and her sister were children their mother would keep them up in the evenings long past their proper bedtime because she was lonely.
In the 1950s and 1960s there was a huge number of elderly spinsters whose only companion was a cat. This was because when they were young there were few men left to marry.
I would like to recount one personal story of a brave young man who died in the Great War. His name was Harrison Edkins. Bear in mind that his story was repeated millions of times with only insignificant differences. It matters not what rank the victims held.
Harrison Edkins was educated at Dulwich College. His father was an insurance clerk so I would imagine that he had won a scholarship to the school although one of his grandfathers was described as a gentleman, so perhaps he paid the school fees.
He left school aged 18 in 1914 and from there he went to Corpus Christie College, Oxford on a scholarship. The war broke out in the few months between his leaving school and taking his university place. He remained at Oxford for just over a year but he obviously felt that his country needed him.
He came down from Oxford at the end of 1915 and no doubt spent Christmas with his parents, his older sister and his younger brother. Then he volunteered for the army. He was commissioned 2nd lieutenant in the 1st Surrey Rifles in February 1916. This regiment was a territorial army regiment although the distinction between the regular army and the territorial army was becoming blurred by this stage of the war. It might be thought strange that Harrison Edkins was commissioned directly from civilian life, but he would have been a cadet in the Officers Training Corps (OTC) at Dulwich - practically all public schools had an OTC and it was compulsory for pupils to join. He would also almost certainly have been a member of the university OTC while he was at Oxford. With the extreme shortage of officers in the Great War this would have been considered sufficient training for a commission.
He joined his regiment, which had already shown itself to be a brave fighting force, in France. In September 1916 the regiment was moved to the Somme to participate in the battle of that name which had been ongoing since the 1st July.
On the 14th September the regiment was behind the front line facing High Wood, an area which had been much fought over. While they waited the soldiers witnessed some strange machines passing through their lines. These were tanks and the following day was the first day that they were used in the war.
On the 15th September the 1st Surrey Rifles were held in reserve while two other regiments from their brigade attacked the German trenches. Their attack was, in general, successful and most of the German front line trench was captured. There was, though, a wide section of that trench in the centre which was still in German hands. The 1st Surrey Rifles were ordered to go over the top and take it. They emerged from their trench and advanced. It was not possible to give artillery covering fire for fear of hitting the British soldiers already in the German trench. As they advanced an artillery officer in a forward observation post used his field telephone to report, “The First Surreys have just gone over as if they were on parade.” As they moved forward the soldiers were subjected to a withering fire from German machine guns, rifles and artillery. Closer to the German trench the soldiers broke into a charge. Then followed desperate hand to hand fighting in the trench, which was finally captured.
Harrison Edkins died at approximately 4.15 p.m. on that day, probably as he led his platoon across no man’s land, but possibly in the melee of the hand to hand fighting.
At the start of the advance the regiment numbered 19 officers and 550 other ranks. At the end of the day only 62 soldiers were on their feet to answer the roll call.
How do I know this story? I used to live in Great Bookham, Surrey in the 1970s and 1980s. When my children were small they attended Sunday school. While I waited to collect them I studied the gravestones in the churchyard. Among them was a memorial to 2nd Lieutenant Harrison Edkins on the grave of his parents. One day when I arrived at the churchyard I found that the memorial had been severely vandalised. The police said that this desecration had been carried out by teenagers. It moved me to research Harrison Edkins and the actions of the 1st Surrey Rifles at the Imperial War Museum and at the Public Records Office.
Harrison Edkins was 20 years old when he was killed. He was probably not much older than the vandals who desecrated his memorial. That memorial was probably erected in 1929 at the time that his father was buried. It stood there unharmed for about 50 years until the age of permissiveness and anything-goes arrived. Those vandals knew nothing about the sacrifices made by a previous generation and would not have cared if they had known. So it is today also.
Almost a whole population is prepared to sit idly by and do nothing except possibly to say, “Tut, tut” while their country is taken over by people of primitive (yes, primitive) alien cultures who do not look like us, do not think like us, do not behave like us and who, in many cases, hate us and want to destroy our way of life. They are helped in their endeavours by Dhimmi police, traitorous judges and politicians, and Common Purpose “graduates.”
There are some of us, however, who are unaffected by the malevolent virus of political correctness. Those of us who can see the truth must take action.
If Harrison Edkins could give up his university place, for which he no doubt worked hard at school, and go off to fight and die for his country in a foreign field, think what things - little things in comparison to what he did- you can do. Think about it.
Remember Lieutenant John Kipling of the Irish Guards, 2nd Lieutenant Harrison Edkins of the 1st Surrey Rifles and the millions like them if you feel that it is too much trouble to exert yourself.
