The four principals on this web site are: Pte. Arthur Slater, Pte. Leonard Monks, 2nd Lt. Alfred Downing and Pte. Edwin Slater. There are many other people with supporting roles in their stories and they are listed here.
Pte. Arthur Slater
Arthur Slater was born in 1896, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. He attested on the 17th October, 1914 in Ashton-under-Lyne with a group of pals and they joined the 9th Battalion, Manchester Regiment.
Arthur fought in Gallipoli, where he was wounded and evacuated to Hospital in Cairo for a month. He later rejoined his regiment in Gallipoli and left there for Egypt on 29th December, 1915. The 1/9th Manchesters spent 1916 in Egypt and then in March 1917 left Alexandria for France. Arthur was wounded again in France and after recovering in the UK returned to France again with the 1st/Sherwoods in April 1918. Here he fought in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Third Battle of the Aisne where he was taken prisoner of war by the Germans in the early hours of May 27, 1918.
The 9th Manchesters
Narratives of the movements of the 1/9th Battalion Manchester Regiment in Egypt and Gallipoli 1914-15, Egypt 1916-17 and France 1917 are posted along with the transcribed battalion war diaries for 1915, 1916 and 1917. Personal dairies and letters covering the battalion’s time in Egypt and Gallipoli in 1914-15 from Sgt. Noel Duncan Braithwaite, 2/Lt. Ned Stringer, Cpl. Thomas Valentine and Lt. Charles Earsham Cooke along with letters and journals of the Reverend J. K. Best are available here.
And all manner of articles from the Ashton Reporter newspaper relating to the 9th Manchesters during WW1 can be found here.
The 1st Sherwoods
In April 1918 Arthur Slater was shipped back over to France and assigned to the 1st Sherwoods. In March 1918 they had been involved in the Second Battle of the Somme suffering serious casualties. In April they fought at the the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and in May the Third Battle of the Aisne. The 1/Sherwoods war diary for May 1918 is here. Arthur Slater was taken prisoner of war in the early hours of May 27, 1918 and we have no records of that but the personal diary of Sgt. Thomas William Chisholm who was also captured that day paints a grim picture of his experiences.
Pte. Leonard Monks
Leonard John Monks was born in 1898 in Warrington, Lancashire. He attested in February 1915 in Warrington when he was 16 years old and was assigned as an orderly to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC).
He trained at Aldershot before shipping out to Alexandria in May 1915 as part of the mobilization of the 21st British General Hospital, arriving in Egypt on May 29, 1915. From here he was assigned to the Hospital Ship VITA where he remained for the rest of the war spending time between Bombay and Mesopotamia and sailing up and down the East Coast of Africa. The VITA’s war diary for 1915-16 and for 1917-19 are provided here.
Len took and collected many photographs during his time overseas and some of them of Basra, Bandar Abbas and Bombay are available here.
While he was on the HS VITA he had to contend with the German Raider SMS Wolf, one of whose victims was the Japanese freighter Unkai Maru No 7 which he saw first hand.
2/Lt. Alfred “Eddie” Downing
Alfred E. Downing was born in 1888 in Warrington. He attested on August 11, 1914 as a Rifleman in the 7th Kings Royal Rifle Regiment when he was 25 years old.
He was rapidly promoted through the ranks to Sergeant and subsequently fought in Ypres and the Somme (where he was wounded and repatriated, spending 68 days in hospital). In May 1917 he was awarded a temporary commission and after 3 ½ months training joined the 9th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment in France as a 2nd Lieutenant. By May 1918 he was a platoon commander of D Company and about to take part in the 3rd Battle of the Aisne. He was killed in action in the early evening of May 27, 1918.
Eddie’s body was never found and there was initially much confusion surrounding his death. The family received a letter from Pte. Henry Kent, but the official inquiry involved an inaccurate statement from Pte. George Cooper who confused his sighting of Capt. RJP Hewetson with 2/Lt. Downing which required personal statements from Col. Alexander Milne Thompson and Nurse Louisa Constance Colt-Williams to resolve.
Pte. Edwin Slater
Edwin Slater was born in 1894 in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. He attested in 1914 in Ashton-under-Lyne and joined the 11th Royal Scotts Regiment.
He deployed to France on on September 18, 1915. Around a week later he was involved in the opening phase of the Battle of Loos resulting in 381 Officers and Other Ranks killed, missing or wounded. Edwin was wounded and repatriated but in February 1916 redeployed to France again and later that year was involved in the Battle of the Somme where he was once again wounded and repatriated. He again redeployed to France in 1917 and on August 22 won the Military Medal.
After the war he was given the honour of presenting Ashton’s injured veterans of WW1 to the King and Queen on their visit to Ashton under Lyne on May 20, 1938.