World War One: Servicemen and Women from Sussex

Throughout the First World War, the guns and fighting in France and Belgium could be heard in East Sussex. At the end of the War the bodies of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers did not return home. Many other men who had been wounded and returned to Britain lost their lives and were buried in their country.

Please link any GENi profiles of WW1 servicemen and women to this Project.

Royal Sussex Regiment - WW1

The Royal Sussex Regiment - 1914-18

The regiment raised a total of 23 battalions and was awarded 69 battle honours and 4 Victoria Crosses, losing 7,096 men during the course of the war. St. Georges Chapel in Chichester Cathedral was restored after the war and serves as a memorial to all members of the Regiment who fell during the war.

Friends of Hastings Cemetery

Notables - WW1 Sussex

• Cuthbert Bromley VC
• 2nd Lieutenant Sidney Clayton Woodroffe, VC

Shot at Dawn - WW1

Over the full course of the war, three soldiers in the Royal Sussex Regiment were sentenced to death and put before a firing squad:

• Private Tite - of the 13th Battalion (Southdowns) Royal Sussex Regiment, was executed for a mix of cowardice and desertion in November 1916. At the time of his execution he was 27. Information about him and his case is found in the work Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War by Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson:
• Private Burrell - served with the 2nd Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment and was executed by firing squad for desertion in May 1916.
• Private J.E. Barnes - charged with desertion and subsequently executed in July 1917. There is little information about him or his case currently available.

The Bray Sisters

There were three qualified Nursing Sisters in the Bray family of Bexhill. Their service in the First World War was recognised in the Bexhill Observer of 4 August 1917. They were Evelyn, Ethel and Mary Bray, daughters of Alderman John Bray, auctioneer estate agent and founder of John Bray & Sons.

Evelyn and Ethel both served in the arena of war close to the Front lines and were recognised for their courage and dedication. Evelyn was awarded a Royal Red Cross medal and Mary served at a large hospital for wounded soldiers in Northumberland, and was active in setting up a hospital for the wounded in London.

Sister Ethel Bray joined the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, (QAIMNS), in August 1914 and went from No.2 General Hospital, Colchester, to France with Dame Maud McCarthy’s party. By December she had joined H.M. Hospital Ship Asturias. In February 1915, the ship evaded attack by a German submarine whilst bringing wounded soldiers back from France. Ethel continued to serve on Hospital Ships aboard H.M.H.S. Nevasa in the Dardanelles until having completed “a sea mileage of 70,000.”

She applied to stay on the QAIMNS reserve after she was demobilised. Her military record reads “Recommended for exceptional service and devotion to duty whilst serving in the H.M. Hospital Ship Nevasa M.8. F. in Gallipoli from August to December 1915.”

From 1917 she was in charge of a Military Hospital in Ipswich. She remained on the Reserve until 1937 aged 58. In her civilian life she worked aboard P&O liner, Narkunda, from 1929 to 1937.

Cicely Evelyn Bray, known as Evelyn, trained at the Poplar Hospital, London and joined the QAIMNS in 1914. She was posted to Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross Medal in 1916, when she was in charge of the operating theatre there. In October 1917, she was posted to a casualty clearing station and was reported to be the Acting Assistant Matron. By May 1918, she was Sister-in-charge of the Surgical Hut of a hospital in Rouen. She was mentioned in dispatches in which her meritorious action was described.

While in Rouen, Evelyn met an officer in the Royal Flying Corps called Alfred Guy Garrod, known as Guy, who she later married at the Garrison Church, Rouen in September 1918. He later become Air Chief Marshal Sir Guy Garrod, M.C., D.F.C.
WIKI Guy Garrod

Not much is known of Mary Bray. In February 1918, she married Captain Edward Clayton of Cricklewood at St Peter’s Church Bexhill, and the Bexhill Observer reported

“For a great part of the year 1915 she assisted at a large Government Hospital for wounded sailors and soldiers in the north of England. For a year and a half she has been in working charge of an improvised hospital in London for wounded officers.”

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References, Source and Further Reading

• Roll of Honour - Sussex
• East Sussex WW1

Stories, memories and events commemorating East Sussex’s role in the First World War

• West Sussex gov.uk
• Sussex - The Great War
• WW1 Photo's - Royal Sussex Regiment
• Battlefields - Sussex Regiments
• Uckfield News - WW1 East Sussex
• North East Medals - Royal Sussex regimewnt
• WIKI Royal Sussex Regiment
• East Sussex WW1
• Sussex - The Great War
• BBC Programmes

Links to Personal Stories

• Reginald Cox who was born in 1892 in Edenbridge, Kent. In 1914 he was living with his Mother and Father Eliza Cox (Nee Surridge) and Henry Cox at Mercatoria Cottages, St Leonards-on-Sea.
• Frederick Thomas Divall – Blackham Village
• The Hon Gerard Freeman-Thomas
• William Frederick Henshaw
• George Lade born in Hailsham, Sussex but after marrying Kate Yates in 1910, emigrated to Australia
• Claude Lowther was a Conservative Politician and owner and resident of Herstmonceux Castle in 1914. At the outbreak of war he raised ‘The Southdowns’; the 11th, 12th, and 13th Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment.
• Major Alfred John Martineau was the Commander of 1/1 Company Sussex Royal Garrison Artillery (R.G.A.) from the 26th Aug 1914 to 15th November 1915
• Private Frank Taylor
• Charles Frederick Onslow Wickham
• L/Cpl. Henry Wooller Killed 17 June 1918 aged 27
• Private Ernest Wooller
• Bombardier Clement William Whyborn was the first Bexhill man to fall during the First World War.
• Doyle, John Henry Weekley and Walter John Titchener related casualties.
• Gypsy Travellers in WW1
• The First World War - East Sussex
• First World War Graves and East Sussex

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