Cecil MITCHELL

83623, Lance Corporal. b. 1881, Clayton d. Wed. 21st August 1918 (aged 37).

A Claytonian born and bred, Cecil had been educated in the village schools and had grown up in Cambridge Street in 1891 and in 1901 he was living at 5 Selbourne Villas in Elm Village, off Pasture Lane with his parents Herbert and Elizabeth, his 2 brothers, Angus and Herbert and a servant. When he left school he found employment at his father’s firm S. Mitchell and Co. Paper Merchants (their sites were at Burnett Road and Vicar Lane in the town centre), and spent several years as one of their travelling salesman.

Cecil married Lillie in 1907, and the couple moved to a new neighbourhood at Westroyd, 18 Park Mount Avenue, Baildon. Next door to Cecils brother Angus who lived at 16 Park Mount Avenue. This reflected a promotion from Cecil’s job, as shortly before enlisting, he was given a full partnership in the company, becoming one of the directors along with various other members of the Mitchell family. Cecil and Lille had two boys, Gerald born in 1908 and Kenneth born in 1910.

Cecil enlisted voluntarily in November 1916 aged 35 yrs and 7 months old, in Keighley into the South Staffordshire Regiment but was quickly transferred during training to the 63rd Battalion, Machine Gun Corps. Thousands of men like Cecil decided to enlist voluntarily instead of waiting for the dreaded conscription telegram; the benefits were more substantial when you came home if you went to war voluntarily.

One of the more mature members of the Armed Forces aged 37, Cecil’s rank of Lance Corporal reflected this. Many of the Non-Commissioned Officers (N.C.O’s) who served during the Great War were also slightly older than the rest of the men: it was assumed that this ‘maturity’ would give them extra insight into the task of leading their fellow soldiers.

His battalion of the Machine Gun Corps was attached, like all Machine Gun units, to a specific Infantry Division and in Cecil’s case this was the Royal Naval Division. This group of men consisted of infantry troops that ‘belonged’ to the Navy: groups such as the Royal Marines and also specially raised battalions such as the Drake Battalion (Albert Thornbury’s unit). These men although in the Navy were not sailors, nor were they any more likely to go to sea than any other infantry battalion was. Their beginnings came from old naval days when Marines were kept on board warships to act as boarding parties during battles, and although this practice had long since been abandoned, the Navy thought it still prudent to keep a small infantry force to hand just to be sure.

It was on the date of Cecil’s death that the Battle of Albert began, one of the final campaigns on the Somme when the German forces were beginning to weaken and give ground. The battle raged for three days with the Royal Naval Division being in the thick of the action, and it suffered many, many casualties. Afterwards, Cecil’s Commanding Officer wrote home to Lillie saying: “His death will be deeply felt by all the men of his section, and though I have only commanded this company for a short time, it has certainly been long enough to know that it has lost one of it’s best junior N.C.O’s.”

Cecil is buried at Mory Abbey Military Cemetery, Mory, Pas De Calais, France. His headstone carries the inscription “Waiting Until He Comes”.

Angus Barker Mitchell

Angus was a year younger than Cecil and shared much of their upbringing in Clayton moving to larger houses as their fathers paper merchants company became more successful. It appears that Cecil and Angus were made partners in the business and moved to new builds in Baildon together. Angus married Janet M Salter and they had a daughter J Maureen Mitchell in September 1915. I can’t locate a military record for Angus Barker Mitchell despite the easier to trace name and so I can only think that as Cecil was 35 when he signed up that at 34 years old Angus was never conscripted. The 1939 register finds Angus, Janet and Maureen still at 16 Park Mounte Avenue in Baildon with Angus now 56 working as a commercial traveller for a paper bag factory. The only death record for Angus B Mitchell I could trace is for August 1964 but is registered at Bromley in Kent, if this is our Angus he would have been 81 yrs old.