6723 Pte Robert Leppington, 2nd Bn, Scots Guards

319 British soldiers died on this day in 1915. On October 17th 1914, 83 men had died; on 17th October 1916 another 329 men, and 447 on the same day in 1917, the majority of these in the muck and filth around Passchendaele. In 1918, on the Advance to Victory, exactly 1000 officers and men gave up their lives for King and Country. That's 2178 men who died on 17th October, and those of course are just the British casualties. And behind every man a mother or father, a wife, children, brothers, sisters...

2178 men on one day, 17th October; one day of many and not the worst day in the war by a long shot - unless you happened to be a relative of one of those 2178 men.

Robert Leppington is the man I am commemorating on this blog today. His parents certainly mourned his loss. After the war, when contacted by the Imperial War Graves Commission, they asked that he should be remembered as the "son of Tom and Eliza Leppington, of 33, Beaconsfield St., Seamer Rd., Scarborough." They also added proudly, "served seven years in the 1st Battalion."

Robert's number dates to April 1907 and so by the time he was killed in the fighting around Loos, he had served for over eight years with Scots Guards. Given his joining date it seems likely that he served his seven years with the Colours and had only been on the Reserve for four months when war was declared. Recalled to the Colours, he almost certainly went straight into the 2nd Battalion and sailed with the battalion for France. His medal index card notes that he arrived overseas on the 7th October 1914, the date on which the 2nd Battalion - after a false start due to enemy submarines - arrived at Zeebrugge.

And so it seems likely that Robert fought with the battalion for a little over year before Loos finally claimed him. Like so many soldiers of the First World War he has no known grave and is remembered instead on the Loos Memorial. And now here too.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Sources:

Ancestry.co.uk (MIC)
Army Ancestry
Army Service Numbers 1881-1918
Commonwealth War Graves Commission