THE 1914 STAR AND BAR TRIO AND IMPERIAL SERVICE MEDAL GROUP AWARDED TO SERGEANT D. RITCHIE

THE 1914 STAR AND BAR TRIO AND IMPERIAL SERVICE MEDAL GROUP AWARDED TO SERGEANT D. RITCHIE, 2ND BATTALION ROYAL INNISKILLING FUSILIERS, ONE OF THE SMALL NUMBER OF OLD CONTEMPTIBLE INFANTRY VETERANS WHO LANDED IN FRANCE IN AUGUST 1914 AND WERE STILL SERVING WHEN THE WAR ENDED IN NOVEMBER 1918, IN RITCHIE’S CASE DESPITE HAVING BEEN INVALIDED PRIOR TO JANUARY 1917, GASSED IN JULY 1917 (SUBSEQUENTLY EVACUATED FOR A SECOND TIME), AND HOSPITALISED WITH INFLUENZA IN NOVEMBER 1918, Four: 1914 Star and bar (8975 Private, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers), British War and Victory Medals (29942 Sergeant, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers) Imperial Service Medal, George VI, obverse with “INDIAE IMP” legend (Duncan Ritchie). Original clasp on 1914 Star, group mounted court style, as worn, Very Fine and better.

Group accompanied by recipient’s Old Comtemptibles Association lapel badge (reverse officially numbered 1642) and Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers Regimental Association gilt bronze and enamel member’s lapel badge.

With 17 pages of photocopied service papers, copied Medal Index Card and photocopied extracts from Regimental History and battalion War Diary.

Duncan Ritchie, born Camberwell, Surrey, enlisted into the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers at London on 18/2/1907. At the time of enlistment he was 19 years and 1 month old and gave his trade as stonemason. Service papers indicate that he had previously seen service in the Militia, but unit not stated. In the pre-war years, in addition to service at home, Ritchie saw service with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in Malta (1908-09), and China (1909-11).

Medal Index Card confirms Ritchie as seeing service initially during WW1 as 8975 Private, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, then as 1533 Private, 2nd Garrison Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, and finally as 29942 Sergeant, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Medal Index Card also confirms Ritchie as seeing service in in France and Flanders from 23/8/1914 (the 2nd Battalion Inniskilling Fusiliers landed as a unit at Havre on 22/8/1914). Unfortunately, Ritchie’s WW1 Service Papers are incomplete, only recording his service during WW1 from 13/1/1917, when Ritchie rejoined the 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers in France after having been invalided for a time back to Ireland (it was whilst back in the Ireland that Ritchie would have seen service with the 2nd Garrison Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, which was raised in Dublin in March 1916 and was still stationed in Dublin when Ritchie rejoined the 2nd Inniskilling Fusiliers in France in January 1917).

Service papers confirm Ritchie, after returning to France in January 1917, as having been subsequently gassed (as a result of enemy gas shell fire) on 22/7/1917. Ritchie was afterwards evacuated to the UK aboard the hospital ship St Patrick, and was eventually hospitalised at Ballykinlar, Co. Down, Northern Ireland, from 30/10/1917 to 6/12/1917 as a result of gas poisoning. There is also a reference in Ritchie’s service papers to his having been gassed on 3/811917, but that is presumably a reference to the date on which he landed in the UK after being evacuated.

The Regimental History records that, by the summer of 1917 the 2nd Inniskillings were stationed on the Belgian coast in the Nieuport sector. This was an unusual posting, in that the Belgians had flooded the land in that sector in order to halt the German advance, which meant that the entrenched positions held by the Inniskillings were mostly on small islands, the regimental history describing the fighting that the men were involved in as being “almost amphibious”. Regimental History also makes mention of the gas attack in which Ritchie was wounded “In July it was in the St George’s sector of the trenches around Nieuport. A gas attack, the enemy using a new gas discharged by shells, caused very heavy casualties, one officer and 243 other ranks being stricken down, but there were few fatalities.” The battalion War Diary provides further details. During the period 20th – 26th July 1917 the 2nd Inniskillings were attached to the 257th Tunneling Company at Nieuport and Dunkirk, “for work”. It was during this attachment that the battalion was subject to German gas shell fire, the battalion War Diary also confirming 1 officer and 243 other ranks having been gassed. The 257th Tunneling Company was one of three Tunneling Companies based in the Nieuport sector in July 1917, employed in offensive mining operations against the opposing German front-line trenches, and in the construction of support tunnels and dugouts, the 2nd Inniskillings providing work parties to assist in that work (photocopied extract from The Tunnelers, The Story of the Tunneling Companies Royal Engineers During the World War re. the operations in the Nieuport sector in July 1917 accompanies group).

After recovering from being gassed, Ritchie was posted back to the Inniskilling Fusiliers. Service papers confirm Ritchie as having transferred back to the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on 6/12/1917, and being posted for service with the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion. That battalion, then stationed in Londonderry, transferred to Oswestry, Wales, in April 1918. Service papers next record Ritchie as being a patient at Oswestry Military Hospital from 31/10/1918 to 8/11/1918, suffering from influenza (the fact that he had been gassed in 1917 would have made him particularly vulnerable, and he was no doubt lucky to survive). Ritchie was discharged to the Class Z Army Reserve on 14/3/1919. Soldiers Papers include extensive documentation re. award of disability pension to Ritchie as a result of his having been gassed.

In the post-war years Ritchie was employed as a postman. He had Northern Irish connections, marrying on 16/5/1918 Catherine Mitchell at Ebrington, Co. Londonderry. Service papers give home address after demobilisation as 255 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1.

A scarce group to an Old Contemptible who was still serving when the war ended in 1918. Current research indicates that only 10% of the Old Contemptibles who saw service in France in 1914 were still serving in November 1918. Most of these survivors were from non-front-line units (Royal Artillery, Army Service Corps, Veterinary Corps, etc). The survival rate for infantrymen was far lower.

Given that Ritchie was invalided to the UK some time between his landing in France on 23/8/1914 and his returning to France on 13/1/1917, and saw service during 1916 with the 2nd Garrison Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, which was raised in Dublin in March 1916, there is a possibility that Ritchie took part in the fighting in Dublin during the Easter Rising in April 1916. Alternatively, if Ritchie was invalided to Ireland after 1st July 1916, he would have seen service with the 2nd Inniskillings on the First Day of the Battle of the Somme, and possibly have been evacuated to Ireland as a casualty of the Somme offensive.

On 1st July 1916 the 2nd Inniskillings formed part of 96th Brigade, 32nd Division. The 2nd Inniskillings were in Brigade reserve at the start of the 32nd Division’s assault on Thiepval on 1st July, but when the leading waves of the other two battalions in 96th Brigade (16th Northumberland Fusiliers and 15th Lancashire Fusiliers) were cut down by intense German machine-gun fire immediately after leaving their trenches, the 2nd Inniskillings were ordered forward, only to suffer the same fate as the Northumberland and Lancashire Fusiliers. The attack having failed, the surviving officers and men from the 2nd Inniskillings were ordered to fall back on the British front line, from where they were relieved on the morning of 2nd July. The 2nd Inniskillings lost 162 officers and men killed, wounded and missing on 1/7/1916.