Huntriss Memorial Window: Mattersey, Nottinghamshire

One memorial window which takes the breath away is situated on the south wall of the parish church in Mattersey, Nottinghamshire.  The church is one of the majority which thankfully is open during daylight hours.  In fact, given the fact that the Church of England is a major custodian of the nation's heritage as the official state church, I think it is beholden on them to open all churches unless there is a compelling reason not to.  But that is a topic for another day.

The window commemorates the deaths of three brothers who spent some of their youth in the quiet village.  They were the sons of William and Charlotte Huntriss.  William had married Charlotte in 1883 and was a successful farmer who by 1911 was living at Mattersey Hall.  He died in 1912 before the war broke out.  Charlotte was thirteen years younger than her husband and would live until 1939.

 

 

 

The quote above the figures is from Revelation 2:10 and reads:

 

BE THOU FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH AND I WILL GIVE THEE A CROWN OF LIFE

 

Underneath the tableau is the inscription:

 

IN EVER LOVING MEMORY OF LIEUT WILLIAM HUNTRISS, 3RD DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S WEST RIDING REGIMENT (ATTACHED TO GOLD COAST REGIMENT) BORN DECEMBER 16TH 1886; DIED OCTOBER 23RD 1918 AT COOMASSIE, AFRICA.

CAPT. HAROLD EDWARDS HUNTRISS, 1ST BATTALION BEDFORDSHIRE REGIMENT, BORN MAY 23RD 1890; DOED OF WOUNDS AT FESTUBERT, FRANCE MAY 17TH 1915.

CAPT. CYRIL JOHN HUNTRISS, 1ST BATTALION EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. BORN JANUARY 23RD 1893, KILLED AT FRICOURT, FRANCE JULY 1ST 1916.

Cyril was born in Scarborough and educated at Uppingham School. He had served in France since January 1915. Cyril had won the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry on 9th August 1915.  At Hooge, Belgium, he had, `led four bombing parties up to the assault on the enemy's position with the greatest coolness and daring.'  He had also been mentioned in despatches by Field Marshal Sir John French in January 1916.   He was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, along with nearly 20,000 other British troops.  His body was never found and he is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial.

Harold was born in East Markham, Nottinghamshire.  The following information comes from the website www.bedfordregiment.org.uk :

Captain Harold Edward HUNTRISS

Killed in action 17th May 1915, aged 24

Harold was born 23rd May 1890 in East Markham, Nottinghamshire, the son of William Huntriss, J.P. and Charlotte Elizabeth Huntriss. He was educated at Uppingham between 1904 and 1908, after which Harold applied to the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy on 29 September 1908, giving his address as Mattersey Hall, Bawtry, Yorkshire.

He was promoted to Lieutenant on 3rd May 1911 and arrived with the 2nd Battalion in France 6th October 1914. Lieutenant Huntriss was hit by shrapnel in the left thigh on the 29th or 30th October, during intense fighting east of Ypres and returned to England to recover after an operation.

Harold returned to the 2nd Battalion in April or May 1915 but was killed at the head of his Company as they advanced to the second German trench line, Major MacKenzie and Lieutenant Hutton-Williams being killed close by. All three were buried together despite the difficulties their men had recovering their bodies after the battle.

At the time of his death, he lived at Harlsen House, Belvedere Road in Scarborough, his widowed mother being his next of kin (resident at 116 Wheelwright Road, Gravelly Hill in Birmingham). There also seems to be a link to Huntriss and Huntriss Solicitors in Halifax who handled his mother's affairs, his brother William seemingly being a partner within the firm.

Lieutenant Huntriss is buried in the Guards Cemetery, Windy Corner, Cuinchy, 7km east of Bethune..

 

 

William was born in Scarborough and died on the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and died in 1918, a few weeks before the end of the war.

 

 

Their names also appear along with the others from the village who made the ultimate sacrifice on the marble tablet next to the window.

 

 



 

One final twist to the tale was that when I came to sign the church visitors' book, the last entry was for a Brian Huntriss from Leicestershire.  I wonder if he is a relation.  I think an enquiry letter beckons.

The Way Ahead

I have been researching the men and women of faith in both World Wars for the past eight years.  In that time I have clocked up thousands of driving miles, spent nearly £8,000 in course fees and hundreds of pounds on books.  All this has been self-funded whilst working full-time in education.

In order to finish the project and submit a PhD thesis which can then be turned into a book and perhaps more I need a further £8,000 for university fees and further funding to travel to interview the dwindling band of WW2 veterans to record for posterity their stories of faith in wartime.  My supervisor has told me that this is valuable and ground-breaking work and there's definitely a book (or two!) in there. 

If anyone is able to contribute any sum, please get in touch (johnbroom@aol.com).  Or if anyone would like to invest into a share of any future publication royalties I would love to discuss it.

Anonymous donations can be made to Halifax acc: Sort code 111271, Account number 00095755

David Briggs - Conscientious Objector who braved the D-Day beaches

Whilst driving to work on Friday, I was listening to the D-Day commemorations on Radio 4.  One feature which greatly moved me was an interview with David Briggs.  He mentioned being in the RAMC, which interested me as that was where my own father, about whom I have posted elsewhere on this blog, did his WW2 service.  Then it transpired that David Briggs was in that regiment because of his Christian convictions, leading him to conclude that he could not bear arms and kill a fellow human.

I did some internet research and discovered that as well as being a fine example of Christianity leading and sustaining peoples' actions in wartime, he had appeared on the first Christmas Carol Service broadcast on radio in 1928 and had gone on to become an eminent headmaster at Kings' School, Cambridge.

His interview is a must-hear for anyone interested in the connection between war and religion in the twentieth century.  Below is a picture of him being interviewed, and one taken at Cambridge a few years ago.  The interview can be heard here:-

http://audioboo.fm/boos/2229577-conscientious-objector-david-briggs-on-d-day

Army Chaplain Training for D-Day, 1944

The following information is drawn from Alan Robinson's excellent book, Chaplains at War: The Role of Clergymen during World War II (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008)

Chaplains taking part in the D-Day landings and action in Europe beyond that began to receive special training for their tasks.

By 1944 concerns had grown about the amount of army chaplains being killed in action, many through taking unneccesary risks to tend to their men.  An earlier order to leave wounded men on the battlefield if the chaplain himself was in danger had proved unhelpful, so in early 1944 a training course was established to prepare chaplains for D-Day and beyond.

Rev. I.D. Neill, Senior Chaplain to the 43rd Division, organised a five day course for his chaplains which included vehicle maintenance, cooking, radio communication, avoiding mines and booby traps, camouflage, security, first aid, map reading and night marches.  It was then decided that all chaplains who were to take part in the Normandy landings should undergo similar training.

Rev. Ivan Neill

The battle school for chaplains was established at Church Stowe in Northamptonshire.  Around two hundred chaplains of all denominations, including Catholics, undertook the course in February and March of 1944.  Additional topics included mine lifting, digging slit trenches, identifying battle sounds to distinguish between rounds passing close by and the general noise of battle, a night navigation exercise, evacuating wounded soldiers and a rigorous assault course.  The assault course included crawling under barbed wire with machine guns firing overhead, jumping into a stream and crawling along trenches.

Unfortunately one chaplain, Rev. Geoffrey L. Treglown, was blinded and had his hand blown off when he used his helmet to smother a stick of explosive that fell in front of him.

Any chaplain failing the course would be posted to bases and lines of communication rather than the front line.

Chaplains attached to the Parachute Regiment received specialised training.  Major-General Browning, commander of the 1st Airborne Division obtained permission from the War Office to put his chaplains through the same training as his officers and men.  Chaplains who joined the Parachute Regiment were all volunteers and motivated by a sense of adventure and a wish to test themselves.  It was a sure way of experiencing combat.  The parachutists spent two weeks training at Hardwicke in Derbyshire.  They had to complete runs of up to 10 miles, assault courses and gym training.  One chaplain, the Rev. Goode was said to be good at `smiting his opponents in the boxing ring in a most unclerical and unbrotherly fashion.'  They also had to pass interviews with psychiatrists to see if they were mentally robust enough for parachute operations.  If they passed the training course and interviews they were sent to RAF Ringway near Manchester for specific parachute training.

Rev Bernard Egan, one of the few Catholic chaplains to complete airborne training wrote:

There was no doubt that the position of a parachute chaplain made all the difference to his relations with the men.  He could truly say that he was one of them, and the men, for their part, liked to feel that the chaplain was undergoing the same trials as themselves, and their mutual feelings of discomfort, nervousness, and exhilaration, were equally shared.  Personal relations with the men mean so much to a chaplain that he feels, these having been so well established, that the difficulties he is likely to encounter have been more than halved.

Rev. Bernard Egan

Alistair Urquhart - Worship in Captivity

The most stunning book I have read in a long time is Alistair Urquhart's The Forgotten Highlander.  He cheated death so many times and displayed such mental strength for three and a half years that it is amazing that he is still alive today, aged 94.  He survivied the Death Railway, the Hell Ships and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

This is a passage he wrote about a concert followed by an impromptu church service at Changi camp in 1942, before the worst of the treatment kicked in:-

One evening hundreds of men milled about our normal spot up the hill.  There was to be a concert, a break from the grinding monotony of camp life.  As a music lover I was thrilled.  The boys were excited too.  Somehow, goodness only knows how, a piano had been dragged all the way up the hill.  It was a brilliant moonlit night and as the musicians arranged themselves total and respectful silence descended on the huge crowd.  Had it not been for the sound of the crickets and the tropical breeze, we could have been in the Albert Hall.  Then a solo violinist, a professional with the London Philharmonic called Dennis East, stepped forward and the plaintive notes of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto reverberated around the hillside.  It was the first music we had heard for months.  I sat entranced, and the boys, strangers to classical music, were agog – spellbound by Mendelssohn’s magic.  For a few minutes the beauty of the music lifted us out of the camp and reminded us of the greatness of European civilisation that Japanese militarists despised.  Some men wept.  When East finished several stunned seconds passed before rapturous applause and cheering broke out.  It was so beautiful.

Eventually the Japanese guards present got bored and left.  When they ahd gone an altar was set up and an interdenominational church service was held.  It proved a welcome morale booster.  Even people like me, not especially religious, found it comforting.  It was to be my one and only church service during three and a half years of captivity but it struck a real chord and made me think seriously about Christianity for the first time.  When the padre finished his sermon on our mount in Changi prison, thousands of miles from home, hundreds of voices joined in a moving rendition of `The Old Rugged Cross.’

The first verse seemed so appropriate to all of us caught up in the fall of Singapore:

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame:
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

The Brinds (two teenagers who Urquhart looked after in his first months in captivity) were both devout Roman Catholics.  Freddie never talked about his beliefs but the brothers were always missing on Sunday mornings and were friendly with the Roman Catholic padre.  The Japanese did not allow church activities yet there were obviously secret masses going on – at considerable risk to all involved.  I never enquired because I did not want the boys to think I was spying on them.  Freddie always wore a crucifix on a silver chain, which he kept tucked under his shirt. If the guards had discovered it, they would have taken it from him and given him a beating.