Cyril Ashman Hon Artillery Company

Cyril Arthur Ashman - (Private No. 746) 2nd Battalion Honourable
Artillery Company 22nd Brigade - 7th Division

Cyril was born on April 17th, 1897 at about the time the family is believed to have moved to Eton Wick from Tidworth in Hampshire. In September 1910 he left the Eton Porny School to complete his education at the Windsor County Boys' School. During his school years he frequently helped on his father's farm until April 1914 when he left school to become a banker's clerk for Barclays at Southall. He joined the Army in April 1916 when he was just 19 years old and served with The Honourable Artillery Company.

He was a very likeable lad and probably more outgoing than his older brother, Douglas. Eight months before Cyril enlisted, his 23-year-old brother was killed in the Gallipoli offensive. It is not known whether this loss influenced his own decision to join the army, but it is not difficult to understand the apprehension of his parents as their one remaining son went off to war.

Edwin and Alice Ashman
with their children
Dorothy, Cyril and Douglas

As a boy he often called on Mrs Roll Bond of I Palmer Place and jokingly asked for titbits from her larder. In return he would take her a pail of skimmed milk and said it would only be given to the animals if she did not use it. Mrs Bond was very fond of young Cyril and she is said to have named a son after him. When Cyril had completed seven months of military training he was posted to the Western Front and in the late summer of 1917 he was serving in the Ypres Salient, Belgium.

He was wounded on October 7th and suffered Trench Fever, but was soon back in the front line. It was late Autumn and the battle had raged for three months with the aim of breaking out from the Salient and capturing the distant high ground known as the Passchendaele Ridge. Intense shelling had destroyed all the network of drainage ditches and the heavy rains made the terrain a glutinous, oozing quagmire.

The name of Passchendaele became synonymous with mud and slush, mud that drowned both men and horses. From the beginning of August 1917, the army had pressed painfully, slowly onward, until on

November 10th the ridge was finally taken at the appalling price of an estimated 250,000 casualties of whom 42,000 were never to be recovered. Cyril was killed here at Gheluvelt on October 26th, 1917, while trying to rescue a wounded comrade. Unlike his brother, he has a grave and is buried in the nearby massive military cemetery known as Tyne Cot. The cemetery is situated five miles northeast of Ypres and it contains 11,000 graves. Memorial walls there name nearly 35,000 other soldiers, who have no known graves. This total of approximately 46,000 British men were all killed in the Ypres Salient between August 1917 and the Armistice of November 1918.


Cyril's grave is number 21; Row C; plot 55. Mr and Mrs Ashman received a letter from their son's commanding officer which read: It is with the greatest regret that I am writing to inform you of the death of your son, Private Cyril Ashman of this Company, who fell on the 26th October while performing his duty under heavy shell fire. His officers regret the loss of a good soldier and his comrades mourn one of their most popular comrades, and it is the wish of all that I should convey to you their deepest sympathy in the great loss which you have sustained.In little more than two years, Edwin and Alice Ashman had lost both their sons in the Great War.

They left Eton Wick and the farm to live in Lansdowne Avenue, Slough. Their one remaining child was Dorothy. She lived until 1956 and was buried in the Eton Wick Churchyard. Her grave headstone bears the names of her two lost brothers along with her own.

Cyril's name is the second on the village memorial. He is also commemorated on the Eton Church Gates and on his old school memorial in Windsor. Cyril was single and 20 years of age.

This is an extract from Their Names Shall Be Carved in Stone  
and published here with grateful thanks to the author Frank Bond.

Cyril Ashman: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission page.

* The Commonwealth War Graves Commission records the death

of Private Cyril Ashman as 28th October 1917. 

Cyril Ashman: The For King & Country page.

Ernest Brown: There is no information about him on Lives of the First World War as yet.

The Eton Wick War Memorial page on Buckinghamshire Remembers website.

Cyril Ashman is also recorded in the Barclays Bank WW1 Roll of Honour. Private Ashman was one of 645 Barclays employees who died in the service of the country during the First World War.

Documents from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website 

E. JORDAN ROYAL ENGINEERS

Ernest Jordan (No. 33180) - Signal Company - Royal Engineers - 13th Division

Ernest was born in 1884 and was one of a family of nine children: seven girls and two boys.

One of ten small terraced cottages
of Prospect Place, built in 1823. 

Home was a small terraced house known as Prospect Place and situated between The Three Horse Shoes and The Grapes public houses. The 10 houses in the row were mainly of one room downstairs and one room upstairs, but because the Jordan family rented an end house next to The Grapes, they were blessed with a second small bedroom. In a deed of 1833 the 10 houses were required to share one well, one pump and one toilet. Just when the facilities were improved has not been established, but certainly by the time the houses were demolished during the 1920s and late '30s tapped water and a shared toilet block had been provided.

By present standards it is difficult to understand how the large family managed. Ernie attended the Eton Wick Infant School until February 2nd 1891 when, at seven years old, he went to Eton Porny School. The Porny records state he was an orphan, although his mother, Jane, still managed the family. Apparently the father had died, and it was not uncommon to be considered an orphan if one parent had gone. Ernest left school on October 3rd 1898, and doubtless the family budget was eased by whatever he was able to earn. As the family married and left home the living conditions too were eased. Some of the family are still well remembered. Sally became the wife of a village coal merchant (Bill Parrot), and William and Frances remained unmarried and lived on in Prospect Place for many more years. Ernie was 30 years old when the Great War started, but he quickly volunteered for military service.

Historians of the war are so used to concentrating upon the Western Front that they often refer to other theatres as the "side shows". Ernie's service and ultimately his life was spent at the side shows of Gallipoli and Mesopotamia (Iraq). For many thousands like him these were certainly anything but side shows. The Gallipoli offensive was launched on April 25th 1915. For several weeks little progress was made against the Turkish defenders until in June it was decided to send strong reinforcements. The only trained and uncommitted troops available were the 10th, 11th and 13th Divisions. The 13th arrived in early August and consequently had the advantage of serving in trenches alongside battle-experienced men near Cape Helles, at the foot of the Gallipoli peninsula. They later fought at Anzac Cove, north of Helles and overlooking the Aegean Sea.

By the end of the year the decision was taken to evacuate all the troops. The 13th Division returned south to Cape Helles and there formed a rearguard defence, allowing other Divisions to embark. By early January 1916 all had been successfully evacuated from Gallipoli. It had been an ill prepared venture, meant to indirectly help the Russians. Most of the Divisions were transported to the Western Front, but the 13th was taken to Mesopotamia, where the enemy was still the Turks. British and Indian troops had been on the offensive there since October 1915 and had pushed forward to within 20 miles of their objective, Baghdad.

After sustaining much sickness and casualties they were forced to withdraw and came under siege at Kut al Amara. The Kut siege lasted 147 days from December 7th until April 29th, by which time the food and general conditions made it impossible to continue and the force surrendered. During the siege a relieving column, which included the 13th Division, made several determined attempts to break through the besieging Turks. Illness was widespread in the inhospitable climate, with cholera, malaria, dysentery and fleas being endemic. With the failure of the relief column to take Kut al Amara in April 1916 it was to be several weeks before a stronger force could be assembled and moved up the long narrow country.

Ernest Jordan was reported as dying on August 20th 1916. His overseas service had taken him far away from the European theatre of war, and had resulted in him serving in two very inhospitable regions, surrounded by much climatic sickness and death. It was sickness which caused his death, and not direct enemy action. He was a single man and 32 years of age. He is buried in the Amara War Cemetery, Iraq, Plot 9; Row B; Grave No. 18. There are 22,000 graves in Iraq and more than 41,000 "missing" are commemorated on memorials as the consequence of the Great War of 1914-18. The Amara Cemetery contains 4,621 graves. Different materials and headstones were used in Iraq to overcome a problem caused by the destructive salt nature of the ground. Ernest is commemorated on the Eton Wick Memorial and also on the Eton Church Memorial Gates. 

CWGC Graves registration report.

CWGC Graves register.

CWGC Memorial panel list.

This is an extract from Their Names Shall Be Carved in Stone 

and published here with grateful thanks to the author Frank Bond. 

Ernest Jordan's Commonwealth War Graves Commission page 

Ernest Jordan's For King & Country page 

Ernest Jordan is recorded on the Buckinghamshire Remembers website

Henry Douglas Ashman (No. 1993) - A Squadron Berkshire Yeomanry

Henry Douglas Ashman (No. 1993) - A Squadron Berkshire Yeomanry
2nd South Midland Mounted Brigade - 2nd Mounted Division

Douglas, as he was usually known, was born at Tidworth in Hampshire in 1892. It is believed that his family came to Eton Wick in the late 1890's when his father Edwin went into partnership with his brother-in-law, Mr Nottage, as farmers at Dairy Farm, Common Road. It appears that the Ashman family lived at Dairy Farm, and the Nottage’s along Tilston Lane, now all part of Eton Wick Road.

Douglas was remembered as a reserved lad. He enlisted in the Territorial Force and in August 1914 he was promptly mobilised. At that time the Territorials term of service was for home defence only, but like the majority of his unmarried comrades he volunteered for overseas service. 

By the following summer the 2nd Mounted were in the Middle East, and in a letter to Mrs Nottage, his Aunt, dated August 7th 1915 and posted in Egypt, he expressed great disappointment because an expected move to the Dardanelles had just been cancelled.

At that time he was on guard at a military sanatorium just outside Cairo. The guards' rather boring job was preventing 600 convalescing Australian soldiers from breaking out of camp for a visit to Cairo. Douglas's disappointment was to be very short and the embarkation to the war zone came all too soon. Initially the Dardanelles venture was to be an attack through the narrow straits, with the intention of subduing the Turkish city of Istanbul, otherwise known as Constantinople.

Mine fields and shore batteries made this a complete and costly failure. Then, on April 25th 1915, army Divisions were landed at various beaches on the tip of the peninsula and Australian and New Zealand troops were landed on the west coast at what became known as Anzac Cove. The rough terrain made it extremely difficult for the inadequately armed forces to advance against a tough and determined defender.

Even though it had never been the intention to become deeply involved with land forces (begrudged from the Western Front) and despite very heavy casualties, more and still more troops were committed in a futile attempt to take the Gallipoli peninsula. Eventually a new attack with fresh troops was planned to be launched in August 1915 at Suvla Bay, adjoining Anzac Cove. At the outset two Divisions were involved and a third, the 2nd Mounted, was held in reserve in Egypt. The date was August 6/7th.

Any limited initial success was quickly negated when the Turks' rushed up reinforcements and regained most of their lost ground. Casualties were very high and the British troops were inadequately supplied with fresh water and heavy ammunition. The disappointment Douglas expressed in his letter of August 7th to his Aunt, referred to his being in the Egypt reserve. 

On August 18th Douglas got his wish as the 2nd Mounted sailed from Alexandria for Gallipoli. These young and raw Territorial troops were part of the 87th Brigade of the much more experienced 29th Division. They were dismounted and served as infantry as they advanced through intense heat to take up assault positions at the base of Chocolate Hill, probably so named on account of its parched and brown appearance.

On August 21st at 1800 hours they were attached to the 2nd South Midland Brigade, and attacked the slopes of Scimitar Hill from their Chocolate Hill position. Intense Turkish machine gun and rifle fire mowed the young territorials down and the dry hillside scrub became a blazing inferno, incinerating the wounded and dead alike.

Douglas perished there, with an enthusiasm for action so typical of the nation's youth, in the first real combat he experienced. The next day the remnants bowed to the inevitable and withdrew. By the end of 1915 the Dardanelles venture was an admitted failure and all the troops were successfully evacuated by January 9th 1916. The allied dead were estimated at 46,000.

Douglas Ashman's remains were never identified and therefore he has no known grave, but is officially commemorated on the Helles Memorial to the missing, at Gallipoli. His name is on panel 18/19. There are 20,765 names on the Helles Memorial, and two other memorials on the peninsula commemorate a further 4,932 and 852 men respectively. There are a further 20,560 men with known graves.

D. Ashman is the first name commemorated on the Eton Wick and Boveney Memorial and is also on the bronze commemorative plaques attached to the gates of the Parish Church in Eton. He is commemorated on the Territorials' Memorial in Windsor, which overlooks the Thames from the bowling green. He was a single man aged 23.

The Douglas Ashman page on the Commonwealth War Graves website

The Douglas Ashman page on the For King & Country website

This is an extract from Their Names Shall Be Carved in Stone 

and published here with grateful thanks to the author Frank Bond.