Hautlieus Catherine Gorin and Rebecca Mattheson were among 39 secondary school students who visited the First World War battlefields where Jerseymen fought and died. Assisted by their tour guide, Jersey historian Ian Ronayne, they recount their experiences
THE battlefields tour really opened our eyes to the First World War as we and our tour guide, Ian Ronayne, followed the routes taken by the five Islanders who had fought and died.
Visiting each of the men’s graves and memorials was quite an experience, and the sheer number of men killed between 1915 and 1917 was overwhelming.
The five Jerseymen were Lieutenant William Bruce VC, Soldat Toussaint Connan, Rifleman John Vibert, Private Wilfred Chinn and Lance Corporal Alfred Basford.
Among all those graves, and the casualty figures, were many other Jersey names, Islanders who went to the Western Front and died in battle or were injured by shells or bullets.
And that was just the start of our tour.
Following these men took us to so many cemeteries as well as to the monuments maintained by the Commonwealth War Commission.
Each one of us experienced different emotions.
Some felt sadness for all the men who had sacrificed their lives for king and country, while others found solace in the thought that even though the First World War was not ‘the war to end all wars’, it definitely had an impact on our view of war and conflict.
One view that generated a great deal of controversy was the difference between British cemeteries and the only German cemetery in France.
One of our group found the visit to the German cemetery a humbling experience, as France had given the German people a place to lay their dead.
Another member of our group thought it was unfair that the Germans weren’t commemorated in the same way as the Allied countries. After all, they were human too.
Many of us agreed with this sentiment – how could we possibly imagine what it was like to be at the front line, face to face with death?
At each site we visited we reflected on our thoughts and ideas and all the new information we were given everywhere we went. It helped us to get to grips with the history of the First World War and how dreadful it must have been for those who fought.
What really brought home to us the immensity of it all were the stories of the five soldiers we focused on – William, Toussaint, John, Wilfred and Alfred – and the effect on those they left at home and their pain at having no one knowing what had happened to them, or knowing whether they were dead or alive.
Lieutenant William Bruce VC
William Arthur McCrae Bruce was born on 15 June 1890 in Edinburgh.
His family later moved to Jersey, where he was educated at Victoria College.
After Sandhurst, he joined the British Indian Army, serving in the 59th Scinde Rifles, who were sent to fight on the Western Front in 1914.
On 19 December that year they went into action in the French village of Givenchy.
Bruce led a group of Indian soldiers to capture an enemy strongpoint.
He was wounded in the neck but remained in command, inspiring his men to fight in the face of repeated German assaults, before he died.
He was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry.
His body was never found, but he is commemorated at the Indian Army memorial at Neuve Chapelle, on the St Clement war memorial and on the Sir Galahad memorial at Victoria College.
Soldat Toussaint Connan
Toussaint Marie Connan was born on 11 November 1884 at Pont Melvez in Brittany.
By 1901 he was living in Jersey and in 1908 he married Jeanne. They had two daughters.
Connan completed his compulsory military service with the French Army and returned to Jersey as an army reservist, and was called up in August 1914.
He was killed in October 1915 when his regiment, Tirailleurs du Maroc, attacked German defences at Grenay, near Arras.
He is buried in the French National Cemetery at Notre Dame de Lorette and is also commemorated on the memorial in St Matthew’s Church, St Peter.
Rifleman John Vibert
John Philip Vibert was born in St Helier on 28 March 1895, the third child of George and Eliza.
In 1911 he joined the West Battalion of the Jersey Militia.
When war broke out his battalion was mobilised to defend the Island and in February 1915, along with his comrades – including his brother, James – he enlisted in the British Army.
The Jersey Company, as they were called, were dispatched to France in December 1915.
In September 1916 they were deployed at Guillemont on the Somme.
In the confused fighting that followed, Vibert was among many killed, but his body was not found until after the war.
James Vibert was killed in Ypres nine months later.
John Vibert is buried in Guillemont Road cemetery and he is commemorated on the St Brelade war memorial.
Private Wilfred Ching
Wilfred Arthur Ching was born on 1 January 1897, the youngest son of George and Mary, who ran St Martin’s Post Office.
In August 1914 he joined the Jersey Militia East Battalion, serving alongside his brothers, George and Raymond.
He was called up in May 1917, and towards the end of September his unit, the 1st Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, went into action at Ypres.
He was killed during the Battle of Broodseinde Ridge and his body was never found.
He is commemorated at Tyne Cot and on the St Martin war memorial.
Lance Corporal Alfred Basford
Alfred Alexander Basford was born on 12 October 1886 in St Mary.
He joined the Royal Navy as a young man, serving for five years, and in August 1914 he was living in Canada.
He joined the Canadian Army in November 1914 and landed in France in September 1915.
He spent the first six months in Belgium, and missed the Battle of the Somme, as he was recovering from a wound in England.
He survived the successful Canadian-led assault on Vimy Ridge on 9 April 1917, only to be killed the following day.
He is commemorated on the Vimy Ridge memorial and on the St Martin war memorial.
