Family Background

Merton’s family were Dorset people. In the early 1800s the distaff side of the family were from the Dorchester and Weymouth areas and the spear side roots were in the Isle of Purbeck.¹

His grandparents, John and Mary Goodchild Masters (born in 1827 and 1833), lived in the hilltop village of Kingston, overlooking the village and remains of Corfe Castle, nestling below in the great notch cleaving the Purbeck Hills. It was there that Merton’s father, Lambert Horfield Rose, was born in 1857 and lived his formative years.

Lambert was an agricultural labourer by the age of thirteen. He then learned his life’s trade from his father who was by this time recorded as a watchmaker. In this he was eventually joined by his brother Alfred, his junior by 13 years.² Lambert met and married Elizabeth Jane Legg.³ Although originally from Weymouth, she had been working in the early 1880s as a domestic servant in Portsmouth. They wed on the 20th of November, 1888 in the Parish Church at Melcombe Regis, Weymouth, which was Elizabeth’s home church.

The family ran a watch, clock and jewellery shop in Swanage. John Rose

Alfred ⁶ was also involved in the business. In addition to the trades quoted, a range of documents variously describe Lambert as a watchmaker, clockmaker, silversmith and jeweller.

Lambert and Elizabeth had eleven children, of which Merton was the fifth. His four sisters and six brothers are as follows:

The family lived above the shop, and although the building was extensive,¹² space must have been restricted for such a large brood. By the Census of 1911, the three oldest children had left home and, sadly, Gwendoline had died in July 1902, aged three.

The family’s children attended Swanage Council School. The older children would have started school at the old National/Board School, opened 1835.¹³ This was replaced in 1897 by the new Council School building, pictured. It had capacity for 600 children (juniors and infants). Harry Powell Padmore was master and Miss Annie Willett, infants’ mistress.¹⁴ Mr.Padmore had been head at the old school.

The new Swanage Council School of 1897. Date of photograph unknown. Courtesy of Belinda Norman

The Western Gazette of Friday 27th December 1907, records Merton amongst those who were awarded medals by the headmaster, Mr. H. P. Padmore, for 100% attendance in the year 1906 to 1907. His brother Osmond gained a SecondClass medal for achieving an attendance of over 97%.

At the age of thirteen, Merton moved up to the Secondary School in Poole. The school, on Kingland Road, Seldown, was newly built and he would have been in the first intake (1907). He completed three years there before returning to his old elementary school as a pupil teacher. He would spend two years in that post.

The pupil teacher would act as a classroom assistant and learn the trade’ from observation and being introduced to increasing responsibilities. The school would receive a small annual payment for each pupil teacher and the headteacher gave further tuition and training before and after the school day. Part of the school week would also be given over to study; pupil teachers were limited by law to a maximum of 20 hours of classroom work per week. Most areas also had pupil teacher training centres where day-release and evening classes were held, though it is not known whether Merton attended one. We do know that Merton used his time out of the classroom to study for his Oxford Senior Examination, which he took and passed in the 1911-1912 school year.

This exam was designed to test a wide range of abilities at school leaving age. There was no prescribed curriculum and so a broad understanding of the subjects tested was required. It was in two parts. A Preliminary paper examined English Grammar and Orthography, Arithmetic, Geography, and an outline of English History. If this was successfully negotiated, the candidate had to pass at least two of the following sections in a second paper: A. English (History, Literature, Geography, Outlines of Political Economy and English Law); B. Language (Latin, Greek, French and German); C. Mathematics (Pure Mathematics and Mechanics); D. Physics (Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Vegetable and Animal Physiology, Geology, and Mineralogy); E. Drawing and Architecture; F. Music. As can be seen, this was no small feat.

The Oxford Seniors pass qualified him to apply for a place at a teacher training college and at the end of the 1912 school year, having succeeded in his examinations, he left Swanage to begin full-time study.

At War

Merton’s time in the Army is complex, with a number of moves between different Battalions and Regiments. On August 4th 1914 War was declared. The College Summer term had just finished and B Company were on the annual camp at Bulford, Salisbury Plain. At the time it comprised some 104 men of which 40 were Seniors (second year students). The men were enlisted (i.e. under full Army orders and discipline) and so at the disposal of the Command. When war was declared, B Company were;

This is a shorthand account. In detail, they were moved from the Bulford Camp to Hilsea, Portsmouth, where they were stationed from August 4th to 10th before returning to Salisbury Plain. There they trained at Bulford Camp, Sling Plantation, Hamilton and Bustard Camps. They then moved back to their familiar College surroundings, which were pressed into use as billets, on October 5th.

Bulford Camp, Salisbury Plain. Copyright unknown.

We need to note, however, that Merton was temporarily unfit for service’ on 5th August 1914” the day after the Company moved to Portsmouth. Territorial soldiers agreed to serve on home soil unless they volunteered for overseas service. The vast majority of his college friends who had been in B Company volunteered to serve overseas and, presumably because of his illness, Merton was not present when this took place. After training, they left for India in two waves: those transferred to the 1/4th Battalion to Poona on October 9th, and those in 2/4th to Quetta²² on December 12th.

Merton served the first 20 months of the war on home duty. His surviving Army records do not clearly indicate in which Hampshire battalion he served during this time, so it is difficult to know what he did or where he was during this time.  Two rubber stamp impressions on documents, dated 7th and 9th February 1916 show he was probably in the 84th Provisional Battalion, more commonly known as the 2/6th (Duke of Connaught’s) Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. These same documents also give, more certainly, his location at that time: Blyth, on the Northumberland Coast, suggesting coastal defence was one of his duties. From other histories, postings of this battalion through this time include Petersfield, Bournemouth and Hursley Park.

It was while at Blyth, on 7th February, that he would volunteer for overseas service by signing the Imperial Overseas Service form. The second form, dated 9th February, is an application to be transferred to the 3/16th Battalion London Regiment. This document also tells us that Private Merton Rose was 5ft 6½in tall and had a 32in chest.

His new unit had just moved from Richmond to Winchester, bringing Merton back to his old haunts. In April the Battalion name was changed from 3/16th to simply to 16th Battalion London Regiment. It was around this time that his record shows two minor misdemeanours while stationed at Tidworth on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border: on Tuesday 11th April 1916 he was found gambling in the barrack room, for which he was admonished. This incident is marked R.W.”Recorded Warning. The second infringement was a little more serious: the following Tuesday, he was late returning from leave, arriving back at barracks at 8am rather than before midnight. The punishment for this was 3 Days C.B.’ (Confined to Barracks). The hearing and punishments took place on 22nd April.

He was transferred to the 2/8th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 16th May. His character, on transfer is described as Very Good’.

On the morning of Sunday, May 22nd 1916, the Battalion left their camp at Perham Down in Wiltshire, marching the short distance to entrain at Ludgershall station, en route to Southampton. As Merton began his journey to the Western Front, it is comforting to know that he would be with friends: fellow WTC students Albert Lewis (with whom he may have crossed paths numerous times in the Army up to this point) and Joseph Sharp were also making the same journey. All three had overlapped at college in the 1913-1914 academic year. At 7pm, 23 Officers, 855 Other Ranks boarded the paddle steamer Princess Clementine²³ at Southampton Dock, bound for Le Havre, landing there the next morning at 3am. They had landed in France as part of the 182nd (2nd Warwickshire) Brigade in the 61st (2nd South Midland) Division, heading into battle.

Princess Clementine

The Battalion travelled the 150 miles to L’Ecleme by train. Here, encamped 5 miles northwest of Béthune, they trained and drilled. Towards the end of the month, they would see their first action in the Battle of Fromelles, moving to Neuve Chapelle, near the France“Belgium border. There, through most of July, the men would be in trenches, suffering moderate casualties. Monthend casualty totals are not given in the Battalion War Diary so losses are difficult to quantify.

Familiar to all infantrymen in the Great War, the 2/8th fell into the repeated rotation pattern between trench and billet through to the end of October. All trenches that they occupied in this period were in the general Neuve Chapelle and Fauquissart area. The whole of November was given over to resting, training and fatigues duties. From the beginning of December, fatigue parties were engaged on or just behind the front line, constructing wire entanglements and salvaging. From the 16th to 20th trench duty was again carried out before falling back on the 20th. Christmas was spent in billets and under canvas at Hédauville, well away from their work of the last few months, but near the Somme”a sign of the road that lay ahead. ²⁴ The Diary records 25th CHRISTMAS DAY”Communion Services”entertainment for the troops.’

Church at Savy, near St Quentin, 25th April 1917. © IWM (Q 2088)

The New Year dawned and saw the Battalion returning to the trenches, this time in the Somme region.²⁵ The trench/relief cycle took them through January, though almost all of February was spent in further training. In midMarch there were heavy engagements at Ablaincourt and Falvy with significant casualties. In April and through to May they were fighting in the Villeveque and Savy areas. On the May 8th Merton left his Battalion and returned to England: his request for a temporary Commission had met with success. We do not know in which Officer Cadet Unit he trained, nor how much of his time in England was allowed as home leave.

The London Gazette, which carried notifications of all appointments to Commissions, records

Second Lieutenant M. A. Rose returned to France on October 31st, 1917. Not unusually, he was assigned to a different unit, in his case the 5th Battalion Warwickshires.

Merton’s exact movements now become difficult to trace. At some unrecorded date between his return to the Front and his death in September 1918, he was Attached’ (i.e. temporarily transferred) to the 2/6th Battalion Warwickshires. This may have happened in late February when a number of men also made this move, but we do not know. With such uncertainty, attempting to follow in detail what he may have been involved in, is of doubtful value. All we can say is that in 1918, if he were in 2/6th Battalion, he would probably have been involved in the following actions:

The Battle of St Quentin, 2123rd March 1918
The Actions at the Somme Crossings, 2425th March
The Battle of Estaires, 911th April
The Battle of Hazebrouck, 1215th April
The Battle of Bethune, 18th April

The next firm evidence of Merton’s war is in the 2/6th Battalion War Diary for September 3rd. ²⁶ They were on the north bank of the River Lys, west of the Still Becque tributary. This was not trench warfare; the Battalion were carrying out open, mobile attacks in a rapidly changing situation, which required adroit decisionmaking on the part of Officers. Lt Rose was commanding No. 10 Platoon, C Company, with his Battalion advancing from west to east. Following the War Diary in detail helps us to see how this progressed.

The reader will find it easier to make sense of the movements by being able to read map positions (e.g. G.17.a.5.6), which are given as follows:

(i) the area letter: G is to the west of the heavy vertical line, H to the east (the letters are not shown on the heavily cropped maps)
(ii) the number of the large 1km square, given at the centre of each square
(iii) lowercase letter ad: these are the quarters of the 1km square, top row is ab, and bottom row cd
(iv) single digit 100m Easting then Northing coordinates, as in Ordnance Survey mapping

Example: The road junction at Pt. de la Boudrette in the following map is at G.10.d.4.4.

River Lys and Croix du Bac area, mapped in June 1918. The Still Becque tributary is seen running north from the Lys past la Boudreille (the stream is also known as Stilbecque and Steenwerke). Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland.

The Diary picks up the events of that day;

Battalion War Diary from 3rd September, 1918

During the night, D Company pushed further east, past Merton’s C Company who then turned to the south. At 6am on the 4th, we read

C Company had managed to bridge the river at G.17.a.5.6. during the night and early morning, and pushed one platoon across to the south.’

The bridge was used to move Platoons from other Companies across the river, allowing an advance on the south bank of the Lys towards Bac St. Maur, which fell during the 4th. The movement now was further east and, initially, south. Merton and C Company were tasked with clearing out resistance south of Bac St Maur (H.19 Central). Here C Company made a considerable advance.’ They then pushed northeast up the Rue Rataille. ²⁷ By dawn on the 6th Merton and his men were in Fort Rompu (H.8.c.0.3) and there were ordered to advance up the Rue de la Lys to H.8 Central, take it and clear out the enemy holding the copse and houses to the south of it. ²⁸

The Diary records:

This had been a most successful day for the Battalion. By evening the 2/7th Battalion Warks passed through their lines after dusk and relieved A, B and D Companies. C Company were left holding the line until relieved the following day by 9th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers.

The actions of 3rd to 6th September carry no casualty information and so Merton’s wounding is not mentioned. He must have been shot during the final stages of the assault on the houses and orchard: no further combat action was recorded that or the next day.²⁹ He was evacuated 20 miles west to No.54 Casualty Clearing Station at AiresurlaLys. ³⁰

Merton was awarded the Military Cross. His citation reads: