Neil Tully Norman's story...

Neil Norman was born in February 1884 in Rochford, Essex. Neil was the youngest of three children, his older brother Guy Louis Norman born in 1881 and his older sister Agnes Isabel Norman born in 1880. His mother, Isabella Tulley was born in Kent on 28 May 1857, being 27 years old when she had Neil. His father, William Horace Norman, was four years her senior born in 1853 in Kettering, Northamptonshire.

By the 1881 Census, the Normans were living in Prittlewell, Essex. William was employed as a schoolmaster, and the family had taken on Eliza Ann Bacon, a 15-year old servant. Prittlewell was the site of a Saxon settlement, established during the Sixth Century, its nomenclature evolving from the Saxon word meaning ‘a babbling brook’ or ‘stream’. The Saxons founded their settlement with mind to the fertile surrounding land and adjacent freshwater stream or Prittle Brook. It is likely that William Norman taught at Saint Mary’s Church of England School, which had been built amongst the now historic conservation area in the then rapidly expanding urban area. Prittlewell, once its own village, had been absorbed into the wider Southend-on-Sea sprawl by the arrival of the railway in the late Nineteenth Century. With the expansion, came the building of Saint Mary’s Church of England School in 1868. A stones throw from Saint Mary’s Church, a Norman establishment from the Eleventh Century, the school was busier than every in the 1880’s. The Education Act rendered school attendance compulsory between the ages of five and ten years old, and William would have taught a large class of children from the surrounding agricultural area.

Just prior to Neil’s birth, the family moved to Rochford, approximately six kilometres to the north of Prittlewell. An ancient market and union town, Rochford in 1884 was keeping pace with the Industrial Revolution, with a large corn exchange built in 1866 and a workhouse. The Norman family were to leave Essex by the end of the decade, for the bustle of East London.

By the 1891 Census, the family were living In a brick terrace at 44 Halidon Street in the inner London suburb of Hackney. Described by sociologist Charles Booth as, ‘a good, clean street with plane trees,’ Halidon Street was a respectable collection of upper-working class families. By 1880, there were 13 permanent schools with 16 by 1890. This growth likely attracted William who brought his family to London with him. Hackney’s growth from rural retreat to residential powerhouse, was catalysed by the construction of Regent’s Canal in the late Georgian Era. The arrival of the railways in 1850 accelerated this urbanisation until the 1870’s when the entire location was dotted with semi-detached dwellings. Seven at the time, Neil must have enjoyed his family’s vibrant neighbourhood as he attended school locally.

By the 1901 Census, the Norman family had moved to 32 Hardwick Road, but remained in Hackney. A lot had changed over the ten years since the last census, with William retiring and Guy finishing an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering. Neil had begun a gardener’s apprenticeship likely in one of the many nurseries that Hackney was famous for in the late Victorian Era.

By the 1911 Census, the family had decided to move to Guildford in Surrey. All three children remained living at home, with William now retired. Guy was a toolmaker for lathe machines and Neil had begun working as a secretary to a company. Guildford, situated in Surrey, had since before Tudor times held an abundance of export businesses. The River Wey bisecting the town provided a tributary to the River Thames, up which merchants could trade wool and later dairy products with London.

The Norman family moved to a detached house at 2 Nightingale Road in Guildford shortly after the 1911 Census. The stable life that the Norman family led in Surrey and indeed all those in Western Europe, was undermined by the Anglo-German Naval Race, war in the Balkans and machinations in the Ottoman Empire. There is little doubt that Neil was aware of disquiet afoot but few anticipated the crisis of 1914 and the slide to war that it precipitated.

The Great War was well-underway by 1917, the disasters of 1914 diverted and the tragedy of 1916 unfolded. The Gallipoli Campaign had come and gone and Jutland had dealt its fateful blow. The Western Front had evolved to a stalemate, hypertrophied salients between Arras and Noyon held glumly by depleted German garrisons.

Operation Alberich, the retreat to the Hindenburg Line, was an attempt to free 14 German divisions from the line and shorten the German interface with French, British and Commonwealth troops. On 9 February 1917, the operation began in earnest with the destruction of natural and human geography on a huge scale. The Siegfriedstellung or Hindenburg Line, was reached on 20 March 1917, the retreating army leaving mines, booby traps and wasteland behind itself.

During these machinations, thousands of men were sent to the quagmire by patriotism or the Military Service Act. Potentially seeing the German movements as an opportune time to enter the war, Neil enlisted on 1 March 1917 at Armoury House. The grand grounds of Armoury House had been the home of the Honourable Artillery Company since 1641. Only a short walk from Hackney, there is no doubt that Neil had passed the estate and travelled to London in order to enlist in the British Army’s oldest unit.

Standing 5 feet and 7 ¾ inches tall, Neil was slightly taller than the average enlistee. He weighed 147 pounds at the time, being of slimmer build. With no background in the pre-war Territorial Force, Neil trained from 2 March 1917 until 8 June 1917, learning how to drill, shoot and hopefully survive combat in Europe.

Placed in No.1 Company of the 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company, Neil had entered a unit already blooded from the battles of Bucquoy on 25 February 1917 and Arras in May 1917. The 1st Battalion had won two Victoria Crosses on 29 April 1917, of which Neil must have been aware.

Although by now 33 years old and one of the oldest other ranks in his company, Neil had yet to gain experience under fire. Undoubtedly with trepidation, Neil arrived at No. 8 Infantry Base Depot at Le Havre on 10 June 1917. The clumped semi-permanent collection of buildings was his home for a fortnight of final training before he joined the 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company to the south of Bullecourt on 24 June 1917.

The 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company had taken part in the first attack on Bullecourt as a member of the 7th Division. Australian and British troops had advanced through rubble, with tanks in support failing to take their objectives. The paltry patchwork of Australian troops reaching the Hindenburg Line were driven out and Bullecourt ended on 16 June 1917 in a costly defeat.

Neil joined his company at the end of June 1917 as they were being relieved from their front-line position outside of Bullecourt. The War Diary 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company (Infantry) elucidates the mundane task of carrying out construction duties to consolidate their position:

'1.7.17 Right of Bullecourt Fine and cooler. Fairly quiet day. Relieved by 2nd Battalion Warwickshire Regiment during night and went back into support. “A” Coy Right trench; “B” Coy 500 yds.in rear in sunken road. “C” and “D” Coys and Battalion Headquarters at ECOUST. No casualties.'

Neil’s battalion occupied the town of Ecoust-Saint-Mein, 16 kilometres south of Arras. Once part of the Hindenburg Line, the commune had been recaptured during the Battle of Arras by the 4th Australian and 7th British Divisions. The latter included the 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company, who lost 27 men from 31 March 1917 to 2 April 1917. A cemetery had been established by the Honourable Artillery Company to bury these dead, which has translated to a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the present day.

To Neil, the small collection of white crosses presented a stark reminder of the maelstrom that lay ahead of him. Intermittent rain and heat created a humid climate for the men to inhabit the front lines amidst. As the War Diary 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company (Infantry) recalled:

'2.7.17 Ecoust Fine and cool. Quiet day. Whole Battalion on carrying parties all night. One O.R. Died of wounds. Heavy rain towards early morning.

3.7.17 Ecoust Fine and warmer. Draft of 32 O.R.’s and 7 Officers rejoined arrived and were posted to companies. 4 O.R.’s wounded. Work all night on communication trenches and parties for R.E.'

Working parties were detachments of men provided to the companies of Royal Engineers who directed their infantry counterparts in the construction of new defences and maintenance of existing fortifications. Wiring parties, or those men assigned to erecting barbed wire, were a critical element of a battalion’s engineering duties. Digging communication trenches was an equally dangerous task, with men exposed to enemy rifle and machine gun fire in no-man’s-land for a significant amount of time before they were able to dig themselves into cover.

Neil was charged with constructing one of these communications trenches. Unfortunately, the German artillery who had by this time several weeks to co-ordinate their range, kept up a steady shower of high explosive and shrapnel shells on the men of the Honourable Artillery Company. Indeed, this nocturnal perdition was Neil’s first taste of action.

He was again in action as War Diary 2nd Battalion Honourable Artillery Company (Infantry) recorded:

'4.7.17 Cloudy most of day. Rifle and feet inspection of all H.Q. details. Work all night on communication trenches and R.E. Parties. 1 O.R. Killed and 3 O.R.’s wounded.

5.7.17 Fine and cooler. 2nd Lieut. R.W. Cryer rejoined from leave to England. Working parties on communication trenches and for R.E. All night. Heavy hostile shelling. 3 O.R.’s wounded.'

Neil was killed on 4 July 1917, the other rank named in the war diary’s intelligence report. It is likely that a direct hit on Neil’s emplacement accounted for him and then men working around him. His service record describes his mortal head wound with catastrophic cranial fracture: Shell contact ?fracture base of skull. GSW Head (skull fracture) spine exit.

The 22nd Field Ambulance attached to the 7th Division stretchered Neil’s stricken body to a nearby casualty clearing station, where he subsequently succumbed to his wounds.

For his parents and siblings at home in Surrey, the news of Neil’s death may have arrived relatively swiftly. A quiet period for the battalion with no further deaths recorded until 13 July 1917, it is probably that his mother and father were notified shortly after his burial in Achiet-le-Grand cemetery.

For the grief of losing her son, Isabel received an annual pension of £7.6s commencing from 23 April 1918. Isabel and William would have received Neil’s: leather wallet, playing cards, several coins and a stamp recovered from his body. His identification discs, letters found in his pocket, a silver wrist watch with the glass cover broken were sent back to England on 3 November 1917.

Neil’s Medal Index Card held by the National Archives in Kew, reveal that his original issue of medals were disposed of on 6 June 1922 after they remained unclaimed. Almost exactly six years later on 8 June 1928, Neil’s mother finally received her son’s medals. As the only member of her nucleus family to fight in the Great War, there is little doubt of the significance that these medals held for her as a reminder of her sacrifice to a British victory.