CAPTAIN BASIL STAINFORTH MANN, 2/6TH WEST RIDING REGIMENT.


CAPTAIN BASIL STAINFORTH MANN, 2/6TH WEST RIDING REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 27th NOVEMBER 1917, AGED 21


Basil was born in the village of Weeton between Otley and Harrogate in 1896 the eldest of four children and only son of William Hutchinson Mann and his wife Alice. His father was an engineer who along with his two brothers owned and ran Mann and Charlesworth & Co who manufactured steam traction engines at their large premises on Pepper Road in the Hunslet area of Leeds.



Basil began is education at Leeds Grammar School but when the family moved to Ilkley in 1909, to live at 2 Fernbank, 10 Crossbeck Road, he was sent as a boarder to Oakham School in Rutland. He finished school in 1913 and was employed in the woollen trade locally and seems to have spent much of his time on the continent.


At the outbreak of war in 1914 Basil enlisted as a private in the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps. This was a unit which existed to train men with no previous military experience who sought a commission in the army. In March 1915 he was gazetted as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 1/6th Battalion of the West Riding Regiment who were based in Skipton, although, the battalion itself was already fighting in France. It was on Christmas Eve of that year that Basil would eventually join the battalion who were stationed in the Ypres sector of the Western Front.


Basil does not seem to have stayed with the battalion for long as by the spring of 1916 he no longer appears on the battalion roll. However, in May 1917 it is known that he was posted to a sister battalion, 2/6th West Riding Regiment in the Somme area.


Promoted to captain, Basil was still with the 2/6th when it was involved in the fighting during the Cambrai Offensive. On 27th November the battalion attacked towards Bourlon Wood which they succeeded in capturing, although, with heavy casualties including Basil who was killed. In a letter to his grieving parents his commanding officer said of him " We had no officer so devoted to his company or so keen in his duty, as you son and his loss is a great blow to us all. I think the death of your son stirred his men, for they advanced rapidly in the face machine gun fire and captured their objective without any officer to lead them. That fact alone proves the value of the work done by your son whilst training his men. November 27th was a sad but honourable day for the battalion.


Sadly, Captain Basil Stainforth Mann has no known grave and is commemorated on the Cambrai Memorial to the Missing and is remembered with pride at St Margaret’s Church on Queens Road  and on the war memorial on The Grove.

Photograph courtesy Liz Ford, Basil Stainforth Mann’s great neice




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28.

Image
2 nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15 th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13 th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28. On the morning of the of the 1 st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, one thousand men of the Leeds Pals awaited the signal to leave the relative safety of their trenches and advance towards the German trenches situated a few hundred yards away in the remains of the village of Serre. Days of heavy British shelling had reduced the landscape to a sea of craters and it was blithely assumed that the enemy wire and trenches had been obliterated. At 7.30am precisely whistles blew and the Pals climbed out of their trenches and began to fan out before starting their deliberate advance towards the German lines. But contrary to their expectations the enemy had not been subdued and instead rushed to man their firing lines and opened up a deadly hail of machine guns bullets. The Leeds men now moving forward in lines walked steadily
Read more

PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19

Image
PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9 th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8 th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19 The youngest son of John Allan-Black and his wife Claire, Hugh was born in the hamlet of Stone Gappe near Lothersdale in the Craven District on the 25 th May 1899. His father was a wool merchant whose father Charles Ingham Black was a noted Irish scholar and poet and formally the Vicar of Burley in Wharfedale. His mother Claire nee Delius was the sister of the famous conductor Frederick Delius of Bradford and who in 1935 would write his biography. When Hugh was very young the family moved to Victoria Avenue in Ilkley where he attended the grammar school. However, in 1914 the family left the town and moved to Castletown on the Isle of Man where Hugh attended King Williams College. Hugh left school in 1917 when he achieved the age of 18 and enlisted into the army. His health was not of the strongest and he appears to have suffered from a w
Read more

2nd LIEUTENANT GERALD HARMER, 9th BATTALION NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 11th AUGUST 1916 AGED 21.

Image
2 nd LIEUTENANT GERALD HARMER, 9 th BATTALION NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 11 th AUGUST 1916 AGED 21. The 9 th North Staffs. spent much of the Spring and Summer of 1916 in the Somme area of the Western Front preparing for the planned offensive which the Allied High Command hoped would win the war. As a designated pioneer battalion the Staffordshires served a dual role, on the one hand as trained infantry, whilst on the other they had the necessary skills to accomplish important construction and engineering jobs which were a feature of static trench warfare. The battalion avoided the dreadful events of July 1 st , the beginning of the great Somme battle and busied itself just behind the front line constructing roads, trenches as well helping to bury the huge toll of dead from the heavy fighting. On the night of 10 th -11 th August 1916 the 9 th Staffs were in the front line near to Bezantin le Petit and sent out three companies to help widen and d
Read more