Pelsall during The Great War

When 3rd Ypres stuttered to a close in the rain and mud of early November 1917, the Guards Division was moved south for the Battle of Cambrai (20th November to 7th December) and it was here, during the Capture of Bourlon Wood, that Grenadier Guardsman Charles Clayton earned a medal for outstanding bravery. The ‘Walsall Observer’ reported, ‘…Private Charles Clayton has been awarded the Military Medal for putting out of action an enemy machine gun on 27th November 1917, saving many lives. Single, now 25, he enlisted in December 1914. A brother who enlisted at the outbreak is with the South Staffords in England.’ Guardsman Clayton, a former miner of Birchley Cottages, Heath End, who more than maintained the reputation of the Grenadier Guards, survived the war and returned home to Pelsall.

As the battle-torn year of 1917 gave way to the New Year of 1918, the Allies hoped that the growing numbers of American troops would swing the balance against Germany but Kaiser Wilhelm’s army had one last surprise in store. The winter months through to late March had become increasingly yet suspiciously quiet. When the dam finally burst and the hammer-blow of the ‘Kaiserschlacht’ (Emperor’s Battle) hit the British lines on 21st March, the Grenadier Guards were in reserve just south of Arras. Three days later they were hurled into the front line in an effort to stem the grey tide and it was at that time that Guardsman Bill Thompson of Shortland Cottage, Pelsall, was wounded. The local paper reported, ‘…Guardsman William Thompson is in hospital in Weymouth with gunshot wounds to the right hand and leg. He has seen four months active service with the Grenadier Guards. He enlisted in December 1915, is single and was previously a bricklayer at Talbot-Stead Tube Works, Bloxwich.’ Thompson made a recovery and survived the war but it is not known whether he returned to the front line.

Throughout the spring the British lines were forced back forty miles to the outskirts of Amiens and here the tide was finally turned. By August the Germans were in retreat and had been pushed back to the town of Albert on the Somme where on 23rd August a 22 year-old Pelsall Guardsman, J.T.H. Owen of the Grenadier Guards, was seriously wounded in the head. The lad was shipped down the line and across the Channel to a hospital in Yorkshire where he remained for some considerable time. Although Owen had been educated at Essington Church School, he lived in Victoria Road, Pelsall, with his parents and he worked for Wiggins of Bloxwich, a firm he left in October 1916 when he enlisted in the Grenadier Guards; he was sent to the front in April 1917 where he saw action at both Passchendaele and Cambrai, and lived through the onslaught of the ‘Kaiserschlacht’ in March 1918. His wound was serious but, unlike so many of his comrades, Owen would not fight again and so would survive the war.