With our thanks to local historian and Author Chris Hare for this moving account of some of the local casualties of The Great War which began 110 years ago this month.

Over 600 Worthing men died fighting in the First World War, or as a result of wounds received or illness. Many died of pneumonia, others succumbed to the influenza pandemic that coincided with the end of the war.

The first Worthing victim of the war was Arthur wright who was killed while on duty protecting the railway line at Worthing on 14^thAugust 1914. The official record does not say how he died – perhaps he was hit by a train? The last victim was Frederick Dredge who was on board the Britannia when it was torpedoed off Gibraltar on 9^th November 1918 – two days before the war ended. His family received the news on the 11^th, as the town was celebrating the armistice. 

James Butcher, a veteran of the Boer War, survived all the horrors of the First World War, only to die of pneumonia in March 1919.

The oldest victim of the war was 52 year old John Bishop, who also died of pneumonia, having been invalided from the front line in December 1914.

It was reported that Herbert Carpenter ‘died of heartbreak in Mesopotamia’ on 19^th August 1918. No more details were given. Perhaps his wife or sweetheart had died in the ‘flu pandemic back home?

William Daughtrey was ‘killed by a comrade in India’. Percy Goodwin was killed in action saving the life of his officer on 9th November 1917; his brother, Harold, died only nineteen days later at the Battle of Passchaendael.

Four members of the Lock family, Thomas, George, Edwin, and Ernest dies during the conflict, as did four members of the Slaughter family, Harry, Walter, Leonard, and Herbert. It is hard to imagine how the wives and parents must have coped with such trauma.

Two Worthing men, Edward Blake and Charles Tuck, drowned with Lord Kitchener, when HMS Hampshire was torpedoed on 5^thJune 1916.

Some had lucky escapes. The Worthing Gazette reported how John Dartnell survived the Battle of Jutland –

‘Yesterday afternoon we had pleasure of welcoming at our offices in Chatsworth Road a young son of the sea, whose age is sixteen and five months. He looked the typical bonny sailor, and did not bear a trace of having been through a terrible ordeal in the North Sea last week. His name is John Albert Dartnell, and his home is 107, Southfield Road, Broadwater. He told us that he has been in the Navy only twelve months, and when it was suggested to him that during that time he had been through more than many men had in a lifetime, he modestly smiled.’

‘The young hero seems to think that the Germans had the worst of the fight, and told us that his ship, the Warrior, after she was hit was towed for twelve miles before having to be abandoned. He was one of the four who were last to leave the sinking craft, and he added with manly pride, ‘I stuck to my post to the last.’’

Alban Pencil in a letter to Worthing councilor, Ellen Chapmam, wrote of the horrors of a battle on the Western Front –

‘Our colonel was killed instantly whilst leading his men into action, and the adjutant was severely wounded shortly afterwards. The enemy snipers invariably pick off the officers first. Our losses in the rank and file were heavy. They advanced without a waver in the face of an inferno of shell, machine gun, and rifle fire. It is terrible to think of a fine battalion like ours, which took a year to form, being reduced to nearly half its original strength all in about an hour. The road I was in was a fair shambles, full of dead and wounded…’

Gunner Pencil survived the war.