The Collection of Medals to Great War Casualties formed by Tim Parsons

Three: Captain J. C. E. Inchbald, Devonshire Regiment, who was killed in action at Ecoust St. Mein on 2 April 1917

1914-15 Star (2 Lieut., Devon R.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Capt.), in card boxes of issue, with related Memorial Plaque (John Chantrey Elliot Inchbald), good extremely fine (4) £600-700

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to Great War Casualties formed by Tim Parsons.

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John Chantrey Elliot Inchbald, who was born in May 1894 and came from Thurlestone in Devonshire, was educated at Cheam School and at Winchester College, prior to winning a classical scholarship to New College, Oxford.

Commissioned into the 9th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment in September 1914, he arrived in France in May 1915 and went on to witness extensive action at Loos and on the Somme. The regimental history refers to his deeds at Loos in September 1915, and more particularly during the attempt to capture Cite St. Elie, when, on one occasion, he and his men became embroiled in hand-to-hand fighting, ‘with the Germans on top of them and all mixed up’.

It would appear he was called up from a reserve echelon on 1 July 1916, when the Battalion suffered heavily. Interestingly, the war poet Lieutenant W. N. Hodgson, M.C., who was killed that day, was a fellow Battalion member. So, too, Captain D. L. Martin, who had foretold his own death - see Martin Middlebrook’s definitive history, The First Day of the Somme, for further details.

But it is for a trench raid that he led on the night of 30 September 1916 that Inchbald most probably won his mention in despatches (London Gazette 4 January 1917). In his official report Inchbald stated ‘Sixteen Germans were killed for certain’, versus his own loss of just two men. The same report confirms that each of his men had been given a tot of rum before zero hour, and that all of them carried ‘four Mills grenades and a knobkerry, except five rifle and bayonet men ...’

Inchbald fell at the head of his Company early in the morning of 2 April 1917, at Ecoust St. Mein, near Bullecourt, when enemy snipers and machine-gun fire contributed to Battalion losses of 16 killed, 68 wounded and eight missing; most probably he fell victim to a machine-gun position located in the cemetery and protected by uncut wire - it proved ‘very troublesome’.

He is commemorated on a headstone at the H.A.C. Cemetery, Ecoust St. Mein; relevant photographs are included, as are photocopies taken from a fellow Battalion officer’s photograph album which features Inchbald - this is today in posession of the regimental museum.